A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

While this may be true, this statement ignores a Local literary history of denying ethnic
writers their voices: In the ‘old days’ as today, matters of economy and discourse decided
whose text got published and advertised, and whose writings were ignored and
disqualified – bear in mind Michener’s assessment that “these Orientals did not produce a
literature of their own.” One can hardly blame the Bamboo Ridge group for taking care of
the voices that were neglected before, for catering to their own kind. They have worked
hard for an avenue, an arena, and they continue to put all their efforts into this provision.
Some sentences from Maxine Hong Kingston’s preface to the 1998 paperback edition of
her essay collection Hawai’i One Summer may serve to complement the label discussion,
indicating that haole does not simply mean “white” but connotes foreigner, outsider,
usurper:
The literary community in Hawai’i argues over who owns the myths and stories,
whether the local language and writings should be exported to the Mainland,
whether or not so-and-so is authentic, is Hawaiian. […] I felt the kapu – these are
not your stories to write; these myths are not your myths; the Hawaiians are not
your people. You are haole. You are katonk. 411
While being critical of an apparent provincialism and resenting an authenticity discourse
she had to enter in the controversy over The Woman Warrior, Kingston acknowledges
that Locals, and especially native Hawaiians, might have a point in holding on to the
stories that are uniquely their own. Although she did not hesitate to write the stories she
felt were hers to tell, the writer was sensitive enough to imaginatively accept the
idiosyncrasy of the Hawaiian microcosm: “Once, on the Big Island, Pele struck me blind.
She didn’t want me to look at her, nor to write about her. I could hear her say, ‘So you
call yourself Woman Warrior, do you? Take that.’ I feel fear even now as I write her
name” (xii).
In his 1998 Hawai’i novel The Red Wind, MacMillan has dealt differently with the
presumptuousness of projecting his imagination, writing “a metafictional indication of
my awareness of my presumption.” The protagonist reflects on his building of a canoe,
thinking: “The wood was sacred. The Red Wind was in the hands of an alien, one not
born worthy of it, and more than anything else he feared that he didn’t have the skill to do
411 Kingston 1998: xi-xii. Kapu means taboo, one of the few Polynesian words besides tattoo and hula that
have made it into the English language. Katonk is a Local term for mainland Japanese.
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