A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

ain’t here because of race, I’m here because I’m human” (217). McKinney’s characters
are responsible for their behavior as individuals, but he makes clear how their histories,
and the histories of their peoples, continue to affect their lives, overwhelming at times all
the reason they can muster.
History is also the driving force in most of Rodney Morales’ short stories in his
1988 collection The Speed of Darkness. Ranging from plantation snapshots of the 1920s
through World War II and the Cold War era to Vietnam and Reaganism, the texts explore
how big events play out locally, individually. Loosely connected by setting (Palama, a
plantation town in what is today West Honolulu) and characters (Kaeo and Lenny appear
in two stories each, several characters are photographers), the stories have their
protagonists realize – from various angles – that the world is more complex and
ambiguous than most would wish. In “Ship of Dreams,” young Takeshi grows up in a
Hawai’i where “immigrants of different backgrounds were finding common ground in
their shared plight. […] No more fights among the workers. Cooperation, instead, was to
prevail. Sharing of food, drink, and dreams.” 318 In 1922, after “The war had ended” and
“the legacy of democracy existed now for the benefit of all,” the 19-year old Japanese
dreams of becoming a lawyer. However, he has to work in his father’s store and spends
his weekends peeping into “the social hall on School Street where the Puerto Ricans
congregated, along with some Portuguese, Hawaiians, a smattering of whites and
Filipinos. (The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans still preferred far eastern means of
expressing themselves, like sake and kachashi)” (17). The sharing becomes a reality only
after the largest squash from his father’s garden has been turned into a “guiro,” “that da
kine, ah, wha-cha-ma-call-it thing that made the scratchy sound that held it all
together.” 319 Having practiced to play the rhythm instrument, “an explicit and implicit
piece of art” (20), in secret, Takeshi is invited to join the musicians: “Come on. No be
shame! We all da same, ovah here. […] Welcome aboard!” The mostly Hawai’i-born
second generation can cross ethnic and cultural barriers more easily than their immigrant
parents. The assurance of common ground induces an optimism towards a multicultural
318 Rodney Morales, The Speed of Darkness, Honolulu 1988: 15.
319 Morales 1988: 17. Takeshi’s high school teacher calls it a calabash or gourd, explaining: “this is the baby
form of Lono, the god of fertility, agriculture, music…everything nice.” Told that “dass Puerto Rican. Not
Hawaiian,” he concludes: “I knew there was something different about this. Different yet same. Nice” (22-
3). Thus hinting at the common, universal things that cross ethnic borders, he calls the place where this is
happening “paradise.”
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