A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Through a series of improvisational workshops, Kapanui developed a one-man play from
his poem, made up of short scenes that aim at examining the reality behind the
stereotypes.
Probably the most outspoken native Hawaiian writer is Haunani-Kay Trask,
scholar, first chair of the Hawaiian Studies Department at UH Manoa, a leading activist in
one of the largest sovereignty groups in the islands, Ka Lahui Hawai’i (‘the Hawaiian
Nation,’ of which her sister Mililani is elected governor, kia‘aina), and last but not least a
poet. Her collection of speeches and essays From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and
Sovereignty in Hawai’i is a sophisticated assessment of colonial historiography, an
account of the contemporary situation governed by tourism and economic interests, and a
plea for an independent future. While Trask’s public discourse and political writings
express the “collective anger and anguish of a people” on the level of argument and
oratory, her poetry strives to make the losses and humiliations of native Hawaiians
tangible. Like that of many native/ethnic/postcolonial/Local artists, her work challenges
the Western tenet of a dichotomy of art and life, art and politics. The introduction to her
first collection of poetry quotes Toni Morrison: “It seems to me that the best art is
political and you ought to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at
the same time.” 392
The three parts of her collection are governed by grief (“Chant of Lamentation”),
anger (“Raw, Swift, and Deadly”), and the unquenchable beauty of place (“Light in the
Crevice Never Seen”). Chanting for dead relatives and friends, imagining the wrath of her
gods and her islands, Trask focuses on the destruction of her native homelands:
graveyard Hawai’i Nei:
coffin buildings, concrete parking
lots, maggot freeways
smell of death
smeared across the land
killing in the heart (13, “Missionary Graveyard”).
Her images are pointed and graphic, her aim is to make the reader feel uncomfortable:
Near the estuary’s mouth
heiau stones lie crushed
392 Haunani-Kay Trask, Light in the Crevice Never Seen, Corvallis 1994: xix.
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