class guide for Melal (PDF) - Windward Community College

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an island slum roughly the size of Ala Moana center.” They suffer frequent electrical outages and insufficient sewage removal. The vast lagoon is polluted near shore and is off limits further out because of unarmed missiles fired from California. Jobs are few, supplies expensive, and health care poor. Pacific Islands Development expert Robert Kiste calls Ebeye “the American version of Apartheid in the Pacific.” Readers of Melal are quickly exposed to this reality. On Good Friday 1981 Rujen Keju starts his day trying to kill a rat in the falling apart, “army-built, concrete blockhouse” he shares with “fourteen clan members and eight family members” (3). Fortunate to have a job on Kwajalein, he must take a ferry three miles to work every day to a place where Marshallese are only allowed by permit and are forbidden to enter most of the establishments, including the commissary where inexpensive goods are available only to Americans. Rujen, though, is one of the lucky ones; most of the Marshallese are either relatives of wage earners or evacuees from other islands. This is a harsh background for a novel that is sometimes humorous and whimsical as well as somber. Yet at its heart remains the question, What does it take to break down race barriers? One clear way not to do it is provided by the story of Rujen’s nephew, Lazarus, who has been having a clandestine affair with an American woman he hopes to marry in order to become a citizen. But once the affair becomes known, the girlfriend is too ashamed to acknowledge her active role: “Melody didn’t even say good-bye, didn’t even look at me, when they dragged me out of there [her apartment] and took me to jail” (278). The novel does, though, suggest some ways that progress can be made. Most obvious is the dramatic change Rujen undergoes during the course of the day, with one mishap following another. Despite having lost his wife to radiation poisoning nine years earlier, Rujen has decided that protesting against the American presence, as his father had, is useless. Instead he has come to accept the American presence and is now proud of being the highest level Marshallese worker at the sewage treatment plant and feels that being an usher at the Catholic church on Kwajalein is what defines him. And yet, after having his rubber boots stolen and his bike vandalized, Rujen begins to lose his optimism about Ebeye’s future. This unraveling is furthered when Rujen, while having lunch at the turtle pond, finds himself unexpectedly taking the Marshallese position about the dolphins and antagonizing Rick and the other Americans. His epiphany occurs when Rujen accidentally crashes the crucifix during the Good Friday mass. Already covered with chum and smelling like shit, having dirtied both the money collected to save the dolphins and the holy water, he now begins to understand Catholicism from a Marshallese perspective. Previously he had simply memorized the liturgy without understanding it; now he comes to view Christ as “a man, a once living breathing man whose ancient land had for so long been occupied and dominated…. For Rujen to understand Jesus Christ this way was to come to an understanding of himself, not just as a man but as a Marshallese and as the son of his father” (273). This new sense of himself brings Rujen closer not only to his father but to his son. Jebro, from the beginning, has been more like his grandfather than his father. Named after “the king of the stars, the greatest hero ever in the Marshall Islands,” Jebro is proud of his “long extra pinkie . . . which he boasted could bring fish by wiggling in the water”
(4). Just back from two years on an outer island, he is determined to take his younger brother across the lagoon to Tar-Woj, his birthplace and the resting place of Rujen’s father—despite its being within the missile range. But unlike his older brother, Nuke has no interest in or knowledge of Marshallese culture. Named after “the most powerful thing on earth” (4), his world is shaped by cigarettes, gangs, suicides. To him and many Marshallese Ebeye was “New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, the closest a Marshallese might ever get to experiencing the life such places offered” (79). The sharp contrast between these two brothers mirrors Rujen’s internal conflict and the broader cultural conflict. The struggle between good and evil in the realm of the gods reinforces the message that the Marshallese must begin to regain a sense of cultural identity. The trickster Etao provides a sense of lightheartedness that, it is implied, is an important part of life and can, unexpectedly, drive off the forces of evil. And the dwarf Noniep, the last of his race, is determined to save the souls of all the dead jellyfish babies and other Marshallese. Yet after Etao has saved him from the demons, Noniep comes to realize that the island of the dead is not the right place for him to take the souls. Instead, the role of the dead should be to go back where they came from and be spirit guardians, like the frigate bird that saves Nuke from drowning. Barclay is well aware that it will take more than renewed pride in Marshallese heritage for the racial and cultural divide to be healed. The Americans, too, must come to a new understanding of the Marshallese. This is provided by the interaction of Jebro and Nuke with the American boys—Travis, Boyd and Kerry. While Boyd is an insensitive and selfcentered teenager, Travis is intrigued by Jebro’s ability to anticipate the movements of schools of fish. Kerry, a newcomer to Kwajalein, rejects Boyd’s view of the Marshallese and begins to open up to cross-cultural awareness. All three boys are shocked by the condition of Ebeye when they drop off Jebro and Nuke—none of them had previously been aware of how shitty Ebeye really was. Yet Travis is impressed with how happy the little kids are playing at the edge of the lagoon. It seems clear that he and Jebro have formed a bond that will lead to a better understanding of each other. This is a small but significant beginning. Melal is a significant contribution to literature of the Pacific. It won the Harriet Goldsberry Award in Hawai`i and was a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Prize for fiction. Barnes and Noble selected Melal for its Discover Great New Writers program. Maori writer Patricia Grace’s enthusiastic endorsement of the novel highlights its significance. Although Barclay is not a Pacific Islander, he knows the situation in Kwajalein first hand. When he was nine, his father took a job at the U.S. missile range and moved his family there. Since graduating from Kwajalein Junior/Senior High school, Barclay has returned to Kwajalein many times for visits and a couple of year-long stints of employment. One can’t help but suspect that Travis in the novel comes close to representing Barclay’s own journey to understanding.
Page 1: Apartheid in the Pacific? 1. JOB

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