class guide for Melal (PDF) - Windward Community College

Annotated Bibliography
Barclay, Robert. Melal (University of Hawai`i Press, 2002). This paperback edition is the
only one so far. All page references are necessarily to this edition.
Barclay, Robert. His website at http://windward.hawaii.edu/people/robert_barclay/
contains links to a number of reviews of Melal.
Blair, Chad. “A particularly bad Friday: First-time novelist Robert Barclay spins a
horrific and hopeful Marshallese tale.” (Honolulu Weekly, November 2002). This review
is particularly interesting because Blair, like Barclay, graduated from Kwajalein
Junior/Senior High School.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Viking Press, 1962). Chief Bromden is
the first person narrator and a central character of the novel, set in an insane asylum. For
most of the novel Bromden appears to others to be deaf and dumb. This caused the critic
Leslie Fiedler to refer to him as “the invisible American.” Many comparisons, of course,
can be made between the treatment of “redskins” and the Marshallese. Most people know
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest from the 1975 movie starring Jack Nicholson rather
than from the novel. However, the movie minimizes the importance of Chief Bromden
and Kesey refused to have his name on the credits.
Kiste, Robert. Review of Melal: A Novel of the Pacific (The Contemporary Pacific,
Spring 2004). As a fellow in the East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development
Program, Kiste is able to provide useful information about the setting of the novel.
Shel Hershinow
Professor Emeritus, Literature
Kapi`olani Community College