Set on the space station of Kepler, Hammajang Luck follows Edie who has been released on parole aſter eight years in prison. They live in Ward Two, one of the poorer districts on the station, with their sister Andie and their two, soon to be three, nieces and nephews. Desperate to make up for lost time, Edie sets about helping Andie and looking for work, but to no avail. With limited options, they join their ex-partner in crime Angel for one last, seemingly impossible, mission—to rob tech trillionaire, Atlas Joyce. The pair begin to recruit the crème de la crème of Kepler’s underworld to carry out the heist of their lives, but can Edie trust Angel aſter she betrayed them? Atlas Joyce is emblematic of parasitical Western capitalism. Described in the novel as a “tech mogul and trillionaire philanthropist”, he has built his fortune founding Atlas Industries. Yamamoto jokes that he is a


Writing about my identity is a political statement even if I don’t want it to be


“chimaera of a bunch of different billionaires” including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel. “I looked into these really wealthy, really powerful politicians, businessmen and entrepreneurs and I would find even weirder things than I was thinking I would find,” they say laughing. Atlas Industries is part of the industrial complex


buying up areas of Kepler’s lower wards, ousting the inhabitants and building commercial units over domestic space. “Where did they go?”, Edie thinks, “Where could they go? So many of us had lived here for generations upon generations – there was no homeworld to go back to.” The gentrification of Kepler “is reflected in the gentrification of Hawaii and the displacement of native Hawaiians”. Yamamoto used the critical issues facing the island as “big references” for the novel. “What would it look like for the Hawaiian diaspora to be pushed out of the islands,” they ask, “and then be pushed out of the Earth and then pushed out of this space station?”


The yearning for home, both the familial and the ancestral, circulates throughout Hammajang Luck as Edie tries to re-establish communal ties and reaffirm their place in the family unit. Against the backdrop of Kepler’s mechanical environment, Edie thinks about the mountains, the sunsets and natural wonders once found on Earth. This juxtaposition was “intentional” as Yamamoto wanted to translate the tenets of Hawaiian culture, and its ties to the land, into a harsh urban land- scape. “Hawaiians are very careful to preserve natural ecosystems… There’s a strong tradition of stewardship of the land in Hawaiian culture,” Yamamoto explains, and so they wanted to interrogate what it meant “to transi- tion Hawaiian ideas and beliefs about stewardship to this technological landscape”.


The broader question of keeping culture alive in a diasporic people is deeply personal for Yamamoto. The author spent their early childhood in Hawaii and then lived on the “mainland for a couple of years”, close to


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their family. “With the diaspora, there is a lot of inten- tionalit that comes into keeping ties with your culture” and Yamamoto recalls how “we would gather together, we would talk story, eat cultural food and we would dance hula”. They continued: “Similar with Kepler, we were in this place that’s so far from home [and thinking about] ‘how do we hold onto this culture that’s so important to us?’ And I think with the diaspora, it’s really finding communit.” Yamamoto uses Hawaiian pidgin—“an amalgama- tion of Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese”—in much of the novel’s dialogue, particu- larly between Edie and their crew members. It is the “primary language” spoken on Kepler and speaks to the kinship between the characters. However, the decision to include pidgin occurred by happenstance. When writing the first line of dialogue between Edie and Cy, fellow crew member and friend, “it just came out in pidgin spontaneously”. Yamamoto “tried to rewrite it in standard English”, but it “sounded wrong”. Notably, the pidgin and Hawaiian words in the novel are not italicised or translated, nor does the novel include a glossary of terms. Yamamoto felt that these practices were “othering” and so asks the reader to do the work.


Familial bonds Hammajang Luck celebrates familial bonds, both blood and found, and these ties take on greater significance in the wake of loss. Following their release from prison, Edie understands how much their world has changed. The family home has reorientated itself around the vacuum leſt by the death of their parents, one of whom died while Edie was in prison. Their personal loss is compounded by communal mourning. People have been forced from their homes and close family friends, including Angel’s father, have also died. When Yamamoto’s mother told them it was a novel “very much about loss”, it initially took them by surprise until they realised their own grief had bled onto the page. Yamamoto’s younger brother passed away in January 2020 as they were beginning Hammajang Luck. Yamamoto takes a breath, before saying: “I didn’t even notice [the themes of loss] as I was writing. It was very subconscious. Edie coming to peace with the loss of their father, the loss of their relationship to their home, and working through that grief and geting to a beter place, I think that was part of my journey too of: ‘I need to work through this sadness, anger and despair and come out at the other end and feel at peace’.”


Metadata


Imprint Gollancz Publication 12.12.24 Format hb (£20), eb (£11.99) ISBN 9781399616799 / 9781399616829 Rights Sold in two territories, including the US (HarperVoyager) Editor Bethan Morgan & Claire Ormsby-Potter Agent Alekseii Keir, Azantian Literary Agency


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Book Extract


“Edie,” she said. “It’s been a long time.” It took everything in me to not walk backwards back into the prison. She must have known, because before I could make a graceless escape she said, “They won’t take you back. I made sure of that.” She stepped forward, and in the florescent lights of the landing pad I could see the depths of her brown eyes. “If you’re interested in ruining your life again, you’ll have to do it the old- fashioned way.” “Not gonna do it your- self?” I said through gritted teeth. “I think you’ve proven yourself capable of doing it all on your own,” she said coolly. I tried to shake loose the anger locking up my mind. “What do you want, Angel?”


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