A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

scant consideration of native Hawaiian writing and even less evidence of an Asian or
other contribution to the island’s literature. And for a long time, no alternative view was
available in print. It was Stephen Sumida’s 1991 book And the View from the Shore:
Literary Traditions of Hawaii 17 that finally filled some gaps: Not only did he make a
tradition of visitor writing and the subsequent resistance to and inversion of its
conceptions of Hawai’i visible, he also exposed a vital and far-reaching tradition of Asian
American literary activity in the islands. This research in turn fostered confidence, which
can partly account for the fact that today Asian Americans create a large portion of
Hawaii’s literature. In addition, several anthologies and dissertations produced in the later
1980s and throughout the 1990s have been explicitly devoted to publicizing that there is
such a thing as literature (or more properly, literatures) from Hawai’i, written by
‘insiders.’ This has generated new discussions and contestations about representation and
belonging; these will be delineated in chapter 5.2, which negotiates ethnicity.
Generally, the islands of the Pacific Ocean have been imagined and pictured as
paradise more often than any other region of the world. For at least three hundred years,
authors and philosophers have inscribed an Edenic mirror world inspired by the accounts
of discoverers, ethnographers, and natural historians. Bougainville’s Tahiti, which he
called “Nouvelle Cythère” and described in enthusiastic terms, is a typical example of
how the explorer’s “vision was conditioned by preconceived ideas to such an extent that
the images he saw were already distorted.” 18 He could not but claim to have found the
heterotopia of Rousseau’s idealized ‘noble savage.’ Generally, South Seas discourse has
to be understood as a subcategory of Orientalism, 19 and its pervasiveness and continuity
can be traced by considering contemporary travel posters of unspoiled beaches and pink
sunsets, complete with smiling hula girls in scant attire. While young, ‘alternative’
backpackers rather keep searching for The Beach in Thailand, India, or Fiji, the wealthier
and more settled middle-aged as well as thousands of honeymooners book their paradise
package to Hawai’i every year. For writers and tourists alike, Pacific islands have too
17 Stephen H. Sumida, And the View from the Shore: Literary Traditions of Hawaii, Seattle 1991. A
criticism of this comprehensive study will be provided in chapter 4.5.
18 Nicole in Hereniko/Teaiwa 1993: 60. Bougainville named Tahiti after the Greek island where
Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of love, emerged from the sea.
19 This term has been coined by Edward Said to name the hegemonic objectifying representation of the
‘other’ in the service of imperialism. The indigenous people are studied and contained; the country is
represented as laboratory or theatrical stage. In an Oceanic context, especially the idea of an ‘imaginative
geography’ is applicable (See Edward Said, Orientalism, London 1995: here 65-6).
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