A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

narrative techniques, such as condensation and self-reflexivity, the layering of meanings,
and the sure vernacular voice all reveal a seasoned literary artist at work.
A different take on personal history is Kathleen Tyau’s 2000 novel Makai, in
which Alice Lum, now in her mid-fifties, narrates her life in flashbacks and memories.
These are triggered by the relationship her grown-up daughter Beatrice has with Wick,
the son of her best friend and rival, Annabel Lee (as in the Poe poem). Her passionate yet
constantly worrying mind is linked to the place she is from, her story governed by island
and water: Her concern begins with Pearl Harbor, shattering the illusion of security. “The
island had never felt so small. It was stupid to hide, to think a shingle roof and thin,
wooden walls could keep us safe.” 366 While sassy Annabel had gone to the mainland and
married a gay man (“Both of them able to be only so close,” 275), the outwardly quiet and
submissive Alice had married the Local boy she loved, though her anxiety about him
wanting her friend has never ceased. The crucial event that continues to haunt her after
more than twenty years was almost drowning in a flash flood with her two little children
on Maui’s notorious road to Hana. She had been on her way to pick up the visiting
Annabel from the airport. She has been sure all these years that Annabel and Sammy had
an affair while she reconvalesced. Their children’s love affair not only brings back the
past but also coaxes Alice’s suppressed feelings to the surface. More importantly, after
Beatrice’s and Wick’s break-up, she regularly visits Annabel’s son, “thinking, This boy is
mine, his mother is me” (286). His questions give her a sense of purpose:
It doesn’t feel like lying, going there. It’s more like hope – my true Golden Age
Club; two members so far. He wants to know everything, so what I remember has
a place to go, and he’s tracing his Hawaiian roots back to the royal days and has
something new to share with me every time. A messenger is what I am. A
translator too (286).
To Alice, home and family have always been the only possible anchors in life, so she
wishes for an elected ‘ohana:
It might work out, this full house, this deck of wild cards. Frankie could marry
Amy Toad, Beatrice could marry Wick, and we could all be together. We can live
upstairs, downstairs, be neighbors, take up the whole block. Then Sammy could
366 Kathleen Tyau, Makai, Boston 2000: 107.
136