Overview

Grab a microphone and turn up the volume. Moving from Hawai'i to Fresno in seventh grade changed Adrienne Robillard's view of the world, herself, and her future. Being a new kid in a new school meant hours of time alone spent listening to cassette tapes and college radio, learning to play the guitar, and writing stories and lyrics. Joining a garage band in high school gave her a sense of belonging she'd never realized possible as she wrote songs with strangers who became treasured friends-one of whom she ended up marrying. Maps and Tapes follows Robillard from San Francisco to the UK, criss-crossing the US and Europe, feeling at home in a van on both sides of the road. In Fresno, ""I went from having friends and blending in to being a loner who kept getting asked, 'What are you?' because I was one of a few half-Asian students at Ahwahnee Middle School,"" she recalls. ""With my headphones on, I could ignore uncomfortable questions."" Later, music became her primary creative outlet and a way for her not to hide, but to connect. In Maps and Tapes, Robillard interweaves lyrics written for her indie-rock bands between stories of first guitar lessons, young love, adventures in studying abroad, and gigging and touring with her bands. Her poignant prose paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which music soundtracked and shaped her teen and young adult years. Her callouts of favorite bands, albums, and songs will make readers want to cue up their own nostalgic playlists-good and loud, to be felt in the bones, the way the best music and memories should. The Hali'a Aloha Series publishes personal essays, memoir, poetry and prose. The series celebrates moments big and small, harnessing the power of short forms to preserve the lived experiences of the storytellers.

Full Product Details

9781948011785

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Reviews

A nostalgic revisiting of Adrienne Robillard's life as a female musician, captured in tender vignettes. -Lisa Nola creator of the Listography Journal series Some people dream of joining a band, but Adrienne Robillard shows how it's done. In her gripping memoir, she goes from the new girl at school to a founding member of an indie band that eventually brings her to the UK and Europe. Maps and Tapes is for anyone who has ever wanted to follow a dream and not had the encouragement to try. -Susan Blumberg-Kason author of Good Chinese Wife Maps and Tapes is a beautifully rendered, gorgeously grounded and poignantly nostalgic story of a girl's coming of age in music. Robillard moves us across space and time, and her prose-like the music nestled within it-perfectly captures the thrills and longings of an era. -Liz Harmer author of The Amateurs and Strange Loops

Author Information

Adrienne Robillard is an English lecturer at Windward Community College. She grew up in Kailua, Hawai'i, and Fresno, California. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. After college she worked in San Francisco as an office temp and marketing professional by day, playing in indie bands Secadora and Citizens Here and Abroad at night. She lives with her husband and their two children in Kailua on O'ahu. In 2020 her first book, The 'Ohana Grill Cookbook: Easy and Delicious Hawai'i-Inspired Recipes from BBQ Chicken to Kalbi Short Ribs, was published by Ulysses Press.

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