Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Summary: In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai'i - this time with tragic consequences - they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.
How to get a copy
Bowman Library Has a few copies of Sharks in the Time of Saviors to check out.
Nearby Atherton and Redwood City libraries have both ebooks and audio versions for card holders.
Hawaiian Language Pronunciation
From GoHawaii.com: "The Hawaiian language, 'Ōlelo Hawai‘i, came to our shores along with the first people to arrive from the ancestral homelands of Polynesia. The language evolved alongside the culture into the nuanced, multi-layered 'Ōlelo Hawai‘i we know today."
Use the interactive Hawaiian Pronunciation Guide on GoHawaii.com to play audio clips and enjoy learning some of the most commonly used words and phrases of the Hawaiian language. Try it!
Bio
Kawai Strong Washburn was born and raised on the Hamakua coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i. His first novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut novel and the 2021 Minnesota Book Award; it was also longlisted for the 2020 Center For Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Former US President Barack Obama chose it as a favorite novel of 2020, and it was selected as a notable or best book of the year by over a dozen publications, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. It has also been translated into eight languages and counting. Washburn lives with his wife and two daughters in Minneapolis.
- Author Interview with Hawaii Public RadioListen to Kawai Strong Washburn in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio (HPR). Scroll down about midway through the page.
- More Interviews with Kawai Strong WashburnFrom the author's website: Links to more interviews and press coverage.
Discussion
- Reading Group GuideSummary, questions, and topics for discussion of "Sharks in the Time of Saviors."
- Discussion Questions from Books are Magic BookstoreBooks are Magic held a book group meeting and used these questions to guide the discussion.
About Hawaii
Likely the first name that comes to many people's minds when thinking of the Pacific Islands, Hawaii is known for many things: its beaches, dances, language, food, and being the only state of the US to house a monarchical palace.
However, there is much more to learn about the arts, culture, people, and social issues beyond the fact that Hawai'i is currently the 50th state, and Bowman Library's healthy collection of E-material is here to help.
Listed below is a sampling of the various works currently available as E-books at Bowman Library, all of which are easily accessible off campus with a valid Menlo College ID.
And the View from the Shore by
This groundbreaking study of a little-explored branch of American literature both chronicles and reinterprets the variety of patterns found within Hawaii�s pastoral and heroic literary traditions, and is unprecedented in its scope and theme. As a literary history, it covers two centuries of Hawaii�s culture since the arrival of Captain James Cookin 1778. Its approach is multicultural, representing the spectrum of native Hawaiian, colonial, tourist, and polyethnic local literatures. Explicit historical, social, political, and linguistic context of Hawaii, as well as literary theory, inform Stephen Sumida�s analyses and explications of texts, which in turn reinterpret the nonfictional contexts themselves. These �texts� include poems, song lyrics, novels and short fiction, drama and oral traditions that epitomize cultural milieus and sensibilities. Hawaii�s rich literary tradition begins with ancient Polynesian chant and encompasses the compelling novels of O.A. Bushnell, Shelley Ota, Kazuo Miyamoto, Milton Marayama, and John Dominis Holt; the stories of Patsy Saiki and Darrell Lum; the dramas of Aldyth Morris; the poetry of Cathy Song, Erick Chock, Jody Manabe, Wing Tek Lum, and others of the contemporary �Bamboo Ridge� group; Hawaiian songs and poetry, or mele; and works written by visitors from outside the islands, such as the journals of Captain Cook and the prose fiction of Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and James Michener. Sumida discusses the renewed enthusiasm for native Hawaiian culture and the controversies over Hawaii�s vernacular pidgins and creoles. His achievement in developing a functional and accessible critical and intellectual framework for analyzing this diverse material is remarkable, and his engaging and perceptive analysis of these works invites the reader to explore further in the literature itself and to reconsider the present and future direction of Hawaii�s writers.
ISBN: 9780295803456Publication Date: 2015-05-01
I Ulu I Ke Kumu by
I Ulu I Ke Kumu is the first volume of a series to be published annually by the Hawai'inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and is intended to be a venue for scholars as well as practitioners and leaders in the Hawaiian community to come together over issues, queries, and strategies. Each volume will feature articles on a thematic topic--from diverse fields such as economics, education, family resources, government, health, history, land and natural resource management, psychology, religion, sociology, and so forth--selected by an editorial team. It will also include a "current viewpoint" by a postgraduate student and a reflection piece contributed by a kupuna. The series will include articles written in Hawaiian and/or English, images, poetry and songs, and new voices and perspectives from emerging Native Hawaiian scholars. Readers who wish to comment on articles, artwork, and other pieces will be able to do so through the monograph discussion link found at the Hawai'inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge website (http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hshk/).
ISBN: 9780824837174Publication Date: 2011-09-30
Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898 by
Provides a comparative study of the symbolic representations, both textual and photographic, of Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico that appeared in popular and official publications in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. It examines the connections between these representations and the forms of rule established by the US in each at the turn of the century.
ISBN: 978082486045Publication Date: 2010
Voices of Fire: Reweaving the Literary Lei of Pele and Hi’iaka by
This is a literary analysis of Pele and Hi'iaka literature from an indigenous, specifically Hawaiian perspective, one inspired by the larger discussions of indigenous literary nationalism by Native American scholars that seeks to add a Hawaiian voice to the conversation. It is also grounded in the Pacific and continuing efforts within Indigenous Studies programmes to negotiate their experiences and histories with settler colonialism and the misappropriations of their literatures that have been relegated to the realms of folklore, mythology, ethnography, and the postcolonial.
ISBN: 9781452941202Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Hawaiian Legends of Dreams by
Moe'uhane, the Hawaiian word for dream, means "soul sleep." Hawaiians of old believed they communicated with 'auma-kua, their ancestral guardians, while sleeping, and this important relationship was sustained through dreaming. During "soul sleep," people received messages of guidance from the gods; romantic relationships blossomed; prophecies were made; cures were revealed. Dreams provided inspiration, conveying songs and dances that were remembered and performed upon waking. Specialists interpreted dreams, which were referred to and analyzed whenever important decisions were to be made. Having no written language, Hawaiians passed their history and life lessons down in the form of legends, which were committed to memory and told and retold. And within these stories are a multitude of dreams--as in a famous legend of the goddess Pele, who travels in a dream to meet and entrance the high chief Lohi'au. Dreams continue to play an important role in modern Hawaiian culture and are considered by some to have as powerful an influence today as in ancient times. In this companion volume to her award-winning Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian Spirits, artist Caren Loebel-Fried retells and illuminates nine dream stories from Hawai'i's past that are sure to please readers young and old, kama'aina and malihini, alike.
ISBN: 9780824872274Publication Date: 2016-08-01
Hollywood's Hawaii by
Whether presented as exotic fantasy, a strategic location during World War II, or a site combining postwar leisure with military culture, Hawaii and the South Pacific figure prominently in the U.S. national imagination. Hollywood's Hawaii is the first full-length study of the film industry's intense engagement with the Pacific region from 1898 to the present. Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett highlights films that mirror the cultural and political climate of the country over more than a century--from the era of U.S. imperialism on through Jim Crow racial segregation, the attack on Pearl Harbor and WWII, the civil rights movement, the contemporary articulation of consumer and leisure culture, as well as the buildup of the modern military industrial complex. Focusing on important cultural questions pertaining to race, nationhood, and war, Konzett offers a unique view of Hollywood film history produced about the national periphery for mainland U.S. audiences. Hollywood's Hawaii presents a history of cinema that examines Hawaii and the Pacific and its representations in film in the context of colonialism, war, Orientalism, occupation, military buildup, and entertainment.
ISBN: 9780813587462Publication Date: 2017-03-01
Context
North Shore Place Names by
In North Shore Place Names: Kahuku to Ka'ena, ocean expert John Clark continues his fascinating look at Hawai'i's past as told through the stories hidden in its place names. This time the author takes the reader on a historical tour of the North Shore of O'ahu, from Kahuku (the north point of the island) to Ka'ena (the west point of the island), and uncovers the everyday lives of the residents, especially prior to the plantation era. Similar to his 2011 book, Hawaiian Surfing, to research this book Clark tapped into the Ho'olaupa'i online database (www.nupepa.org): a vast archive of 125,000 pages of Hawaiian-language newspapers published from 1834 to 1948. The author collected an enormous number of references to specific North Shore locations and presents them in an easy-to-use dictionary-style format, which includes original passages in Hawaiian with English translations by Keao NeSmith. Discover these highlights and others in this unique look at O'ahu's North Shore: Letters from the longtime principal of the girls' school that eventually gave Hale'iwa its name. Examples of the clash of cultures between traditional Hawaiian practices and Christianity, as evident in accounts of hula performances. Old-time traffic accidents--one that involved Queen Lili'uokalani when she was trapped by her overturned horse-drawn carriage--and unusual train fatalities. Notices of auctions of Government lands, property trespasses, stolen sheep, and stray horses. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in Hawai'i history and the Hawaiian language, North Shore Place Names brings to life the names, places, and events of the historic North Shore community.
ISBN: 0824847695Publication Date: 2014-10-31
Legendary Hawai'i and the Politics of Place by
Hawaiian legends figure greatly in the image of tropical paradise that has come to represent Hawai'i in popular imagination. But what are we buying into when we read these stories as texts in English-language translations? Cristina Bacchilega poses this question in her examination of the way these stories have been adapted to produce a legendary Hawai'i primarily for non-Hawaiian readers or other audiences. With an understanding of tradition that foregrounds history and change, Bacchilega examines how, following the 1898 annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, the publication of Hawaiian legends in English delegitimized indigenous narratives and traditions and at the same time constructed them as representative of Hawaiian culture. Hawaiian mo'olelo were translated in popular and scholarly English-language publications to market a new cultural product: a space constructed primarily for Euro-Americans as something simultaneously exotic and primitive and beautiful and welcoming. To analyze this representation of Hawaiian traditions, place, and genre, Bacchilega focuses on translation across languages, cultures, and media; on photography, as the technology that contributed to the visual formation of a westernized image of Hawai'i; and on tourism as determining postannexation economic and ideological machinery. In a book with interdisciplinary appeal, Bacchilega demonstrates both how the myth of legendary Hawai'i emerged and how this vision can be unmade and reimagined.
ISBN: 9780812201178Publication Date: 2011-06-03
Hā`ena: Through the Eyes of Ancestors by
Ha'ena is a land steeped in antiquity yet vibrantly beautiful today as any Hollywood fantasy of a tropical paradise. He 'āina momona, a rich and fertile land linked to the sea and the rising and setting sun, is a place of gods and goddesses: Pele and her sister, Hi'iaka, and Laka, patron of hula. It epitomizes the best that can be found in the district of northwestern Kaua'i, known to aboriginal Hawaiians as Hale Le'a (House of Pleasure and Delight). This work is an ambitious attempt to provide a unique perspective in the complex story of the ahupua'a of Hā'ena. Carlos Andrade begins by examining the stories that identify the origins and places of the earliest inhabitants of Hā'ena. The narrative outlines the unique relationships developed by Hawaiians with the environment and describes the system used to look after the land and the sea. Andrade goes on to research the changes wrought by concepts and perceptions introduced by European, American, and Asian immigrants. He delves into the impact of land privatization as Hawai'i struggled to preserve its independence. The Mahele and the Kuleana Act, legislation that laid the foundation for all landholding in Hawai'i, had a profound influence on Hā'ena. Part of this story includes a description of the thirty-nine Hawaiians who pooled their resources, bought the entire ahupua'a of Hā'ena, and held it in common from the late 1800s to 1967--a little-known chapter in the fight to perpetuate traditional lifeways. Lastly, Andrade collects the stories of kūpuna who share their experiences of life in Hā'ena and surrounding areas, capturing a way of life that is quickly disappearing beneath therising tide of non-Native people who now inhabit the land.
ISBN: 9781441619679Publication Date: 2008-01-01
American Aloha by
At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai'i's multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The "edu-tainment" spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai'i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawai'i. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation. Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies, and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of how the carefully crafted staging of Hawai'i's cultural diversity was used to serve a national narrative of utopian multiculturalism--one that collapsed social inequities and tensions, masked colonial history, and subordinated indigenous politics--while empowering Hawai'i's traditional artists and providing a model for cultural tourism that has had long-lasting effects. Heather Diamond deftly positions the 1989 program within a history of institutional intervention in the traditional arts of Hawai'i's ethnic groups as well as in relation to local cultural revivals and the tourist industry. By tracing the planning, fieldwork, site design, performance, and aftermath stages of the program, she examines the uneven processes through which local culture is transformed into national culture and raises questions about the stakes involved in cultural tourism for both culture bearers and culture brokers.
ISBN: 9781441619716Publication Date: 2008-01-01
The Legend of Laieikawai by
The twins Läieikawai and Läielohelohe are separated at birth but remain linked by their great beauty and a series of unscrupulous admirers and fickle husbands. Eventually the sisters are reunited with the help of a colorful cast of characters, including a man-eating lizard, a "cosmic" spider, and a giant bird, and find happiness at last in each other's company. This timeless kaao, or legend, of long ago is lovingly retold and illustrated here by renowned Island artist and storyteller Dietrich Varez.
ISBN: 0824840437Publication Date: 2004-03-31
Waves of Resistance by
Surfing has been a significant sport and cultural practice in Hawai'i for more than 1,500 years. In the last century, facing increased marginalization on land, many Native Hawaiians have found refuge, autonomy, and identity in the waves. In Waves of Resistance Isaiah Walker argues that throughout the twentieth century Hawaiian surfers have successfully resisted colonial encroachment in the po'ina nalu (surf zone). The struggle against foreign domination of the waves goes back to the early 1900s, shortly after the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, when proponents of this political seizure helped establish the Outrigger Canoe Club--a haoles (whites)-only surfing organization in Waikiki. A group of Hawaiian surfers, led by Duke Kahanamoku, united under Hui Nalu to compete openly against their Outrigger rivals and established their authority in the surf. Drawing from Hawaiian language newspapers and oral history interviews, Walker's history of the struggle for the po'ina nalu revises previous surf history accounts and unveils the relationship between surfing and colonialism in Hawai'i. This work begins with a brief look at surfing in ancient Hawai'i before moving on to chapters detailing Hui Nalu and other Waikiki surfers of the early twentieth century (including Prince Jonah Kuhio), the 1960s radical antidevelopment group Save Our Surf, professional Hawaiian surfers like Eddie Aikau, whose success helped inspire a newfound pride in Hawaiian cultural identity, and finally the North Shore's Hui O He'e Nalu, formed in 1976 in response to the burgeoning professional surfing industry that threatened to exclude local surfers from their own beaches. Walker also examines how Hawaiian surfers have been empowered by their defiance of haole ideas of how Hawaiian males should behave. For example, Hui Nalu surfers successfully combated annexationists, married white women, ran lucrative businesses, and dictated what non-Hawaiians could and could not do in their surf--even as the popular, tourist-driven media portrayed Hawaiian men as harmless and effeminate. Decades later, the media were labeling Hawaiian surfers as violent extremists who terrorized haole surfers on the North Shore. Yet Hawaiians contested, rewrote, or creatively negotiated with these stereotypes in the waves. The po'ina nalu became a place where resistance proved historically meaningful and where colonial hierarchies and categories could be transposed. 25 illus.
ISBN: 9780824860912Publication Date: 2011-03-02
Lady Friends by
Many indigenous Hawaiians who have moved to the islands' cities languish at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and are thought to have lost their cultural roots. Initially apolitical urban Hawaiians were often skeptical of activists who sought to revitalize traditional ways; yet, as Karen L. Ito shows, Hawaiian women in particular continue to maintain and express crucial aspects of their cultural heritage in their lifestyle and interactions with others. Ito conducted intensive fieldwork with six Honolulu families, all of which shared the distinguishing characteristics of Hawaii's matrifocal society. In her close examination of the friendships and family relations among the women in these households, she focuses on the significance of a traditional manner of speech known as "talk story" which they use when conversing together. She describes how her subjects employ metaphoric language to address issues concerning responsibility, retribution, understandings of self and personhood, and methods for conflict resolution. For these "lady friends," Ito finds, the emotional quality and quantity of their social relationships help define personal identity while their common concepts of morality bind them together. By applying ethnopsychological strategies to the exploration of culture, Ito demonstrates cultural continuity at a level where most observers would not expect to find it. Lady Friends brings a new dimension to Hawaiian research.
ISBN: 9781501721809Publication Date: 2018-08-06
The Purposes of Paradise by
For half a century, the United States has treated Cuba and Hawai'i as polar opposites: despised nation and beloved state. But for more than a century before the Cuban revolution and Hawaiian statehood of 1959, Cuba and Hawai'i figured as twin objects of U.S. imperial desire and as possessions whose tropical island locales might support all manner of fantasy fulfillment--cultural, financial, and geopolitical. Using travel and tourism as sites where the pleasures of imperialism met the politics of empire, Christine Skwiot untangles the histories of Cuba and Hawai'i as integral parts of the Union and keys to U.S. global power, as occupied territories with violent pasts, and as fantasy islands ripe with seduction and reward. Grounded in a wide array of primary materials that range from government sources and tourist industry records to promotional items and travel narratives, The Purposes of Paradise explores the ways travel and tourism shaped U.S. imperialism in Cuba and Hawai'i. More broadly, Skwiot's comparative approach underscores continuity, as well as change, in U.S. imperial thought and practice across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Comparing the relationships of Cuba and Hawai'i with the United States, Skwiot argues, offers a way to revisit assumptions about formal versus informal empire, territorial versus commercial imperialism, and direct versus indirect rule.
ISBN: 9780812200034Publication Date: 2011-06-06
Context
Big Happiness by
"Big Happiness is extremely important to our community. Mark Panek's biography of Percy Kipapa speaks to the consequences of the destruction of Hawai'i's rural neighborhoods, unchecked development, the ice epidemic, the failures of government, sumo, intricate family and neighbor relationships, and more. What is most impressive is Panek's ability to weave all of these complex topics together in a seamless narrative that connects all the dots. Part mystery, part investigative journalism, part poignant Island portrait, this work contains an emotional element that binds the reader to the subjects in a dignified yet touching way, showing compassion and even affection for people while revealing their flaws and shortcomings. This book will resonate with an Island audience and with anyone interested in Hawai'i." --Victoria Kneubuhl, Hawai'i writer and playwright "This book tells of personal triumphs and failures, and also the triumphs and failures of families, communities, organizations, agencies, governments, and churches dealing with the multiple consequences of 'progress' in contemporary Hawai'i. There have been heroes and villains at all levels--frequently, the same individuals and agencies are both at the same time. The story of Percy Kipapa is especially poignant because professional sumo gave him a unique opportunity to transcend Hawai'i's culture of colonialism, racism, poverty, and drug addiction, which in the end all brought him down anyway. Mark Panek has done a masterful job of weaving these strands together."--Reverend Bob Nakata, former Hawai'i state senator "Spanning the history of Waikane and the brutality of Japan's national sport, Big Happiness is a remarkably ambitious piece that links one man's murder to the ice epidemic, land development, and political corruption in Hawai'i. Mark Panek's meticulously researched, skillfully written, heartbreaking story, filled with voices that ring true, is an indictment of an entire system that crushed a gentle giant. While other Hawai'i writers dwell in 'take me back to da kine' nostalgia, Panek tells it like it really is." --Chris McKinney, author of The Tattoo and Mililani Mauka
ISBN: 9780824860929Publication Date: 2011-02-17
An Unlikely Revolutionary by
Anyone interested in understanding the last fifty years of Hawai'i's economic and political history would do well to examine the life of Matsuo "Many" Takabuki. Actively involved in the Democratic Party during the post-World War II years, Takabuki was among a generation of Americans of Japanese Ancestry to rise to political office in the 1950s. A confidant of Governor John Burns, a member of the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of Honolulu, a business associate of developer and financier Chinn Ho, a trustee of the Bishop Estate -- Takabuki has been at the heart of many of the sweeping social, financial, and political changes that have fundamentally altered Hawai'i in the last half century. An Unlikely Revolutionary is Takabuki's own story, told in his characteristically straightforward manner, of his life and work as one of the "movers and shakers" behind Hawai'i's transformation from an isolated, agriculture-based territory to a highly diverse, competitive modern community.
ISBN: 0585239347Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Taken from the Paradise Isle by
Crafted from George Hoshida's diary and memoir, as well as letters faithfully exchanged with his wife Tamae, Taken from the Paradise Isle is an intimate account of the anger, resignation, philosophy, optimism, and love with which the Hoshida family endured their separation and incarceration during World War II. George and Tamae Hoshida and their children were a Japanese American family who lived in Hawai'i. In 1942, George was arrested as a "potentially dangerous alien" and interned in a series of camps over the next two years. Meanwhile, forced to leave her handicapped eldest daughter behind in a nursing home in Hawai'i, Tamae and three daughters, including a newborn, were incarcerated at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas. George and Tamae regularly exchanged letters during this time, and George maintained a diary including personal thoughts, watercolors, and sketches. In Taken from the Paradise Isle these sources are bolstered by extensive archival documents and editor Heidi Kim's historical contextualization, providing a new and important perspective on the tragedy of the incarceration as it affected Japanese American families in Hawai'i. This personal narrative of the Japanese American experience adds to the growing testimony of memoirs and oral histories that illuminate the emotional, psychological, physical, and economic toll suffered by Nikkei as the result of the violation of their civil rights during World War II.
ISBN: 9781607323440Publication Date: 2015-07-15
In Haste with Aloha by
This ambitious volume assembled by scholar David W. Forbes features a collection of ninety previously unpublished letters, as well as excerpts from two diaries, written between 1881 and 1885 by Hawaiian royal consort Queen Emma Kaleleonālani. In Haste with Aloha illuminates the last five years of the Queen's life and makes available an important record of royal social life and customs in nineteenth-century Hawai'i. Much of her earlier correspondence has been published in two books by the late Alfons L. Korn: The Victorian Visitors: An Account of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1861-1866 and News from Molokai: Letters between Peter Kaeo and Queen Emma, 1873-1876. In her letters, almost all of which were written in English, Queen Emma provides a rare account of ali'i (royal) perspective, endowing modern readers and researchers with insight far beyond the limited available documentation of public speeches or printed statements. Besides the nuances of correspondence between the Queen and her recipients, there is much to be considered and analyzed in her descriptions of ali'i, many of them relatives to Emma, including Bernice Pauahi Bishop and Ruth Ke'elikōlani. With few comparable Hawaiian historical primary resource texts in print, In Haste with Aloha is a welcome addition, making accessible a preserved and treasured collection of documents drawn primarily from the Hawai'i State Archives, along with diaries in Bishop Museum Library and Archives. Fully transcribed and with annotation by Forbes, editor of the monumental four-volume Hawaiian National Bibliography and annotator of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani, this text sheds light on the lives of Hawai'i's ruling class in the decade leading up to climactic political transition.
ISBN: 9780824857844Publication Date: 2017-04-30
Facing the Spears of Change by
Facing the Spears of Change takes a close look at the extraordinary life of John Papa `Ī`ī. Over the years, `Ī`ī faced many personal and political changes and challenges in rapid succession, which he skillfully parried or seized, then used to fend off other attacks. He began serving in the household of Kamehameha I as an attendant in 1810, at the age of ten, and became highly familiar with the inner workings of the royal household. His early service took place in a time when ali`i nui (the highest-ranking Hawaiians) were considered divine and surrounded with strict kapu (sacred prohibitions); breaking a kapu pertaining to an ali`i meant death for the transgressor. He went on to become an influential statesman, privy to the shifting modes of governance adopted by the Hawaiian kingdom. `Ī`ī's intelligence and his good standing with those he served resulted in a great degree of influence within the Hawaiian government, with his fellow Hawaiians, and with the missionaries residing in the Hawaiian Islands. As a privileged spectator and key participant, his published accounts of ali`i and his insights into early nineteenth-century Hawaiian cultural-religious practices are unsurpassed. In this groundbreaking work, Marie Alohalani Brown offers an elegantly written and compelling portrait of an important historical figure in nineteenth-century Hawai`i. Brown's extensive archival research using Hawaiian and English language primary sources from the 1800s allows access to information which would be otherwise unknown but to a very small circle of researchers.
ISBN: 9780824858711Publication Date: 2016-05-31
Context
Kalaupapa by
Between 1866 and 1969, an estimated 8,000 individuals--at least 90 percent of whom were Native Hawaiians--were sent to Molokai's remote Kalaupapa peninsula because they were believed to have leprosy. Unwilling to accept the loss of their families, homes, and citizenship, these individuals ensured they would be accorded their rightful place in history. They left a powerful testimony of their lives in the form of letters, petitions, music, memoirs, and oral history interviews. Kalaupapa combines more than 200 hours of interviews with archival documents, including over 300 letters and petitions written by the earliest residents translated from Hawaiian. It has long been assumed that those sent to Kalaupapa were unconcerned with the world they were forced to leave behind. The present work shows that residents remained actively interested and involved in life beyond Kalaupapa. They petitioned the Hawaii Legislative Assembly in 1874, seeking justice. They fervently supported Queen Liliuokalani and the Hawaiian Kingdom prior to annexation and contributed to the relief effort in Europe following World War I. In 1997 Kalaupapa residents advocated at the United Nations together with people affected by leprosy from around the world. This book presents at long last the story of Kalaupapa as told by its people.
ISBN: 9780824865801Publication Date: 2012-09-30
The Value of Hawai'i by
How did we get here? Three-and-a-half-day school weeks. Prisoners farmed out to the mainland. Tent camps for the migratory homeless. A blinkered dependence on tourism and the military for virtually all economic activity. The steady degradation of already degraded land. Contempt for anyone employed in education, health, and social service. An almost theological belief in the evil of taxes. At a time when new leaders will be elected, and new solutions need to be found, the contributors to The Value of Hawai'i outline the causes of our current state and offer points of departure for a Hawai'i-wide debate on our future. The brief essays address a wide range of topics--education, the environment, Hawaiian issues, media, tourism, political culture, law, labor, economic planning, government, transportation, poverty--but the contributors share a belief that taking stock of where we are right now, what we need to change, and what we need to remember is a challenge that all of us must meet. Written for a general audience, The Value of Hawai'i provides a cluster of starting points for a larger community discussion of Hawai'i that should extend beyond the choices of the ballot box this year.
ISBN: 9781441671530Publication Date: 2010
The Island Edge of America by
In his most challenging work to date, journalist and author Tom Coffman offers readers a new and much-needed political narrative of twentieth-century Hawaii. The Island Edge of America reinterprets the major events leading up to and following statehood in 1959: U.S. annexation of the Hawaiian kingdom, the wartime crisis of the Japanese-American community, postwar labor organization, the Cold War, the development of Hawaii's legendary Democratic Party, the rise of native Hawaiian nationalism. His account weaves together the threads of multicultural and transnational forces that have shaped the Islands for more than a century, looking beyond the Hawaii carefully packaged for the tourist to the Hawaii of complex and conflicting identities--independent kingdom, overseas colony, U.S. state, indigenous nation--a wonderfully rich, diverse, and at times troubled place. With a sure grasp of political history and culture based on decades of firsthand archival research, Tom Coffman takes Hawaii's story into the twentieth century and in the process sheds new light on America's island edge.
ISBN: 0585478856Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Hawaiian by Birth by
2018 Sally and Ken Owens Award from the Western History Association Twelve companies of American missionaries were sent to the Hawaiian Islands between 1819 and 1848 with the goal of spreading American Christianity and New England values. By the 1850s American missionary families in the islands had birthed more than 250 white children, considered Hawaiian subjects by the indigenous monarchy and U.S. citizens by missionary parents. In Hawaiian by Birth Joy Schulz explores the tensions among the competing parental, cultural, and educational interests affecting these children and, in turn, the impact the children had on nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy. These children of white missionaries would eventually alienate themselves from the Hawaiian monarchy and indigenous population by securing disproportionate economic and political power. Their childhoods--complicated by both Hawaiian and American influences--led to significant political and international ramifications once the children reached adulthood. Almost none chose to follow their parents into the missionary profession, and many rejected the Christian faith. Almost all supported the annexation of Hawai'i despite their parents' hope that the islands would remain independent. Whether the missionary children moved to the U.S. mainland, stayed in the islands, or traveled the world, they took with them a sense of racial privilege and cultural superiority. Schulz adds children's voices to the historical record with this first comprehensive study of the white children born in the Hawaiian Islands between 1820 and 1850 and their path toward political revolution.
ISBN: 1496202376Publication Date: 2017-09-01
A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i by
Christianity figured prominently in the imperial and colonial exploitation and dispossession of indigenous peoples worldwide, yet many indigenous people embrace Christian faith as part of their cultural and ethnic identities. A Chosen People, a Promised Land gets to the heart of this contradiction by exploring how Native Hawaiian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more commonly known as Mormons) understand and negotiate their place in this quintessentially American religion. Mormon missionaries arrived in HawaiOCyi in 1850, a mere twenty years after Joseph Smith founded the church. Hokulani K. Aikau traces how Native Hawaiians became integrated into the religious doctrine of the church as a OC chosen peopleOCOOCoeven at a time when exclusionary racial policies regarding black members of the church were being codified. Aikau shows how Hawaiians and other Polynesian saints came to be considered chosen and how they were able to use their venerated status toward their own spiritual, cultural, and pragmatic ends. Using the words of Native Hawaiian Latter-Day Saints to illuminate the intersections of race, colonization, and religion, A Chosen People, a Promised Land examines Polynesian Mormon articulations of faith and identity within a larger political context of self-determination.
ISBN: 9780816680139Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Islanders in the Empire by
In the early 1900s, workers from new U.S. colonies in the Philippines and Puerto Rico held unusual legal status. Denied citizenship, they nonetheless had the right to move freely in and out of U.S. jurisdiction. As a result, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans could seek jobs in the United States and its territories despite the anti-immigration policies in place at the time. JoAnna Poblete's Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i takes an in-depth look at how the two groups fared in a third new colony, Hawai'i. Using plantation documents, missionary records, government documents, and oral histories, Poblete analyzes how the workers interacted with Hawaiian government structures and businesses, how U.S. policies for colonial workers differed from those for citizens or foreigners, and how policies aided corporate and imperial interests. A rare tandem study of two groups at work on foreign soil, Islanders in the Empire offers a new perspective on American imperialism and labor issues of the era.
ISBN: 9780252096471Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Island Queens and Mission Wives by
In the late eighteenth century, Hawai'i's ruling elite employed sophisticated methods for resisting foreign intrusion. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, American missionaries had gained a foothold in the islands. Jennifer Thigpen explains this important shift by focusing on two groups of women: missionary wives and high-ranking Hawaiian women. Examining the enduring and personal exchange between these groups, Thigpen argues that women's relationships became vital to building and maintaining the diplomatic and political alliances that ultimately shaped the islands' political future. Male missionaries' early attempts to Christianize the Hawaiian people were based on racial and gender ideologies brought with them from the mainland, and they did not comprehend the authority of Hawaiian chiefly women in social, political, cultural, and religious matters. It was not until missionary wives and powerful Hawaiian women developed relationships shaped by Hawaiian values and traditions--which situated Americans as guests of their beneficent hosts--that missionaries successfully introduced Christian religious and cultural values. Incisively written and meticulously researched, Thigpen's book sheds new light on American and Hawaiian women's relationships, illustrating how they ultimately provided a foundation for American power in the Pacific and hastened the colonization of the Hawaiian nation.
ISBN: 9781469615615Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Hawai'i at the Crossroads of the U. S. and Japan Before the Pacific War by
Hawai'i at the Crossroads tells the story of Hawai'i's role in the emergence of Japanese cultural and political internationalism during the interwar period. Following World War I, Japan became an important global power and Hawai'i Japanese represented its largest and most significant emigrant group. During the 1920s and 1930s, Hawai'i's Japanese American population provided Japan with a welcome opportunity to expand its international and intercultural contacts. This volume, based on papers presented at the 2001 Crossroads Conference by scholars from the U.S., Japan, and Australia, explores U.S.-Japanese conflict and cooperation in Hawai'i--truly the crossroads of relations between the two countries prior to the Pacific War. From the 1880s to 1924, 180,000 Japanese emigrants arrived in the U.S. A little less than half of the original arrivals settled in Hawai'i; by 1900 they constituted the largest ethnic group in the Islands, making them of special interest to Tokyo. Even after its withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933, Japan viewed Hawai'i as a largely sympathetic and supportive ally. The Islands represented Japan's best opportunity to explain itself to the U.S.; here American and Japanese diplomats, official and unofficial, could work to resolve the growing tension between their two countries. While hopes on both sides of the Pacific were shattered by the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japan-Hawai'i connection underlying not a few of them remains important, informative, and above all compelling. Its further exploration provided the rationale for the Crossroads Conference and the essays compiled here.
ISBN: 9781441619839Publication Date: 2008-01-01
The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation by
Through the voices and perspectives of the members of an extended Hawaiian family, or `ohana, this book tells the story of North American imperialism in Hawai`i from the Great Depression to the new millennium. The family members offer their versions of being "Native Hawaiian" in an American state, detailing the ways in which US laws, policies, and institutions made, and continue to make, an impact on their daily lives. The book traces the ways that Hawaiian values adapted to changing conditions under a Territorial regime and then after statehood. These conditions involved claims for land for Native Hawaiian Homesteads, education in American public schools, military service, and participation in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. Based on fieldwork observations, kitchen table conversations, and talk-stories, or mo`olelo, this book is a unique blend of biography, history, and anthropological analysis.
ISBN: 9781782380122Publication Date: 2013-09-30
The Ilse by
On January 13, 1903, the first Korean immigrants arrived in Hawai'i. Numbering a little more than a hundred individuals, this group represented the initial wave of organized Korean immigration to Hawai'i. Over the next two and a half years, nearly 7,500 Koreans would make the long journey eastward across the Pacific. Most were single men contracted to augment (and, in many cases, to offset) the large numbers of existing Chinese and Japanese plantation workers. Although much has been written about early Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawai'i, until now no comprehensive work had been published on first-generation Korean immigrants, the ilse. Making extensive use of primary source material from Korea, Japan, the continental U.S., and Hawai'i, Wayne Patterson weaves a compelling social history of the Korean experience in Hawai'i from 1903 to 1973 as seen primarily through the eyes of the ilse. Japanese surveillance records, student journals, and U.S. intelligence reports--many of which were uncovered by the author--provide an "inner history" of the Korean community. Chapter topics include plantation labor, Christian mission work, the move from the plantation to the city, picture prides, relations with the Japanese government, interaction with other ethnic groups, intergenerational conflict, the World War II experience, and the postwar years. The Ilse is an impressive and much-needed contribution to Korean American and Hawai'i history and significantly advances our knowledge of the East Asian immigrant experience in the United States.
ISBN: 0824851145Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Local Story by
The Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931-1932 shook the Territory of Hawai'i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by "some Hawaiian boys" in Waikīkī. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia's husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later discovery of his body in Massie's car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor's office at 'Iolani Palace, the four were set free. Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case's investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others--in fact, this understanding of the term "local" in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. It looks at the racial and sexual tensions in pre-World War II Hawai'i that kept local men and white women apart and at the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators. Lastly, it examines the revival of interest in the case in the last few decades: true crime accounts, a fictionalized TV mini-series, and, most recently, a play and a documentary--all spurring the formation of new collective memories about the Massie-Kahahawai case.
ISBN: 9780824840211Publication Date: 2014-08-31
Fighting in Paradise by
Powerful labor movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii, beginning in the 1930s, when International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) representatives were dispatched to the islands to organize plantation and dock laborers. They were stunned by the feudal conditions they found in Hawaii, where the majority of workers--Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino in origin--were routinely subjected to repression and racism at the hands of white bosses. The wartime civil liberties crackdown brought union organizing to a halt; but as the war wound down, Hawaii workers' frustrations boiled over, leading to an explosive success in the forming of unions. During the 1950s, just as the ILWU began a series of successful strikes and organizing drives, the union came under McCarthyite attacks and persecution. In the midst of these allegations, Hawaii's bid for statehood was being challenged by powerful voices in Washington who claimed that admitting Hawaii to the union would be tantamount to giving the Kremlin two votes in the U.S. Senate, while Jim Crow advocates worried that Hawaii's representatives would be enthusiastic supporters of pro-civil rights legislation. Hawaii's extensive social welfare system and the continuing power of unions to shape the state politically are a direct result of those troubled times. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne's gripping story of Hawaii workers' struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.
ISBN: 9780824860219Publication Date: 2011-07-31
Dismembering Lahui by
Jonathan Osorio investigates the effects of Western law on the national identity of Native Hawaiians in this impressive political history of the Kingdom of Hawaii from the onset of constitutional government in 1840 to the Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which effectively placed political power in the kingdom in the hands of white businessmen. Making extensive use of legislative texts, contemporary newspapers, and important works by Hawaiian historians and others, Osorio plots the course of events that transformed Hawaii from a traditional subsistence economy to a modern nation, taking into account the many individuals nearly forgotten by history who wrestled with each new political and social change. A final poignant chapter links past events with the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty today.
ISBN: 9780824845407Publication Date: 2002-06-30
About the Menlo Common Book Program
Each year, Menlo designates a common book for all first-year students, although all members of the Menlo Community are encouraged to read the book. The book is sent to each first-year student with the expectation that students will arrive on campus ready to discuss this year's selection. Instructors teaching freshman English and STS100 classes incorporate themes and selections from the common book into their classes.
The Common Book is selected with community input by the Menlo Common Book Committee each year. The committee selects titles based on readability, application to the Menlo curriculum, and relation to national and global issues.