A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

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shorthand way of tapping into the deeply rooted and irrational fear of Filipino men that people already have in our communities. […] When writers use people and violence in such a graphic way, the writing becomes manipulative. 436 The problem with the controversy, especially in the media and in academia, was the conflation of several issues: Yamanaka’s supporters invoked the freedom of art, and accused her critics of censorship. However, as Fujikane notes, the protest had never been about the “banning, boycotting or burning of books.” 437 Rather, it addressed the liberal humanist separation of art and life, art and politics. To challenge this bourgeois Western position has been the prerogative and contribution of ethnic, minority, and postcolonial literatures, and here we have a specifically ‘Local’ instance of such a challenge. Over the course of the controversy, the earlier debate about Kingston’s Woman Warrior has frequently been inferred: After the success of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, several Chinese American writers and critics, led by a belligerent Frank Chin, had accused the author of distorting Chinese history, tradition and culture to serve American expectations and stereotypes. This generated a heated discussion that dovetailed with the further problem of an audience that was taking Kingston’s book as a factual autobiography although the narrative structure would seem to undermine such an interpretation. Note that in Kingston’s case, criticism arose largely from within her ethnic community about her portrayal of that community. In general, ethnic literature has borne the double burden of being read as either essential representation or not authentic enough. In Hawai’i, ethnic hierarchies are complex, and although local Japanese have their own history of oppression and racism, currently they are in a position of structural dominance, economically, politically, and socio-culturally. Thus there is a perceived need to refocus on the realities of inequality, racism, and difference instead of covering diversity with the umbrella term ‘Asian American.’ The umbrella’s strategic consolidating value might be outdated: Hawaii’s literature is a case in point, as Local Asians assert their difference from their mainland ‘relatives.’ When explaining their complaints about Blu’s Hanging, both Fujikane and Rodrigues echo Edward Said’s credo of the worldliness of texts, and both support their argumentation by invoking already challenged (colonial) representations. Fujikane 436 Darlene Rodrigues, “Imagining Ourselves: Reflections on the Controversy over Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging,” in: Amerasia 26 No. 2 (2000): 195-207, here 200-1. 437 Fujikane 2000: 160. 168
argues: “As Asian American writers and critics have shown, fictional representations of Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, and Madama Butterfly/Miss Saigon do have discriminatory effects […] Literature exerts a material force.” 438 In Rodrigues’ words: Many people defend Yamanaka by saying that Blu’s Hanging is just a piece of fiction. The same things can be said about Jack London’s and James Michener’s portrayals of Asian Americans, but Asian Americans are critical of those portrayals. […] Art exists in the world. Fiction comes from people; it’s read by people; it’s talked about in the world. […] Words have an impact, and that’s why representations are so important. To say that fiction doesn’t hold any substance is such a small view of the world. 439 Fujikane strives to expose the system of racism that condones and endorses stereotypes while covering up societal inequities. She quotes the African Canadian poet M. Nourbese Philip: “It is, perhaps, typical of a liberal democracy that racism in the writing and publishing world would be reduced to the individual writer sitting before her word processor, with only the imagination for company.” 440 Rodrigues, on the other hand, portrays the reactions of the subaltern aptly, in a way that echoes precisely Fanon’s medical descriptions of the oppressed psyche of the colonized: Filipino characters in Blu’s Hanging are used and exploited just as Filipino labor in Hawai’i has been used and exploited, first by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, now by the hotels in the tourism industry. […] those who will feel the brunt of the effect of this novel are the Filipinos who work two or three jobs, who will never ever read this book. […] Oppression goes back to four hundred years of Spanish colonization in the Philippines. We were told, My skin is white and your skin is brown; white is right and brown is not. […] The worst effect of oppression is that we begin to believe that we are crazy; we turn inward and we blame ourselves when racism is not about us as individuals. […] People throw down the statistics for Native Hawaiians, African Americans, and Filipino Americans who have the poorest health. It’s not just that people are poor, and they don’t get the proper nutrition. What happens is that the body internalizes that oppression and begins to turn on itself. The results are high instances of heart 438 Fujikane 2000: 162. 439 Rodrigues 2000: 201. 440 Fujikane 2000: 163. 169
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A PARADISE LOST: MAPPING CONTEMPORA
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Das vierte Kapitel beschreibt die E
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Abstract This study is the first to
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5.1.4 Personal History: Poetry and
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No alien land in all the world has
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place for them on the map of ideas
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scant consideration of native Hawai
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time, we are all being distanced a
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mainland term, or ‘Hawaiian’ li
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the novel is to prevent his daughte
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uniqueness. Hawaii’s history of s
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end.” 44 Postcolonialism is often
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nation, in this case, the United St
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with the imperial power, and by emp
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strategy will be employed to analyz
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intermingling… It rejoices in mon
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grid of interdependence.” 78 Echo
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form and the resulting disjunction
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‘postmodern condition’ we all a
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each discourse stems from different
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as much an “India of the mind”
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If ‘the Caribbean’ is conveyed
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Hawai’i is a U.S. state, but its
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Another common aspect of discarding
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decolonization, independence, and n
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not only were all the eleven territ
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solidarity as a bulwark against the
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Subramani discloses how the modern
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At no time in my undergraduate Engl
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epresentativeness, a cautioning aga
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the issei. Few had gone against the
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Yogi names David Mura, Cynthia Kado
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accepted ethnicities. 191 The book
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Cobb (Keller), Gary Pak, and Cathy
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[…] I learned to make my mind lar
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chapter will illustrate. After the
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academic departments began offering
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American terms. Recalling a rhetori
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No need to hear your voice when I c
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In the mid-19 th century, the first
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His admiration of the physical abil
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to come home at dusk, waiting with
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chant and hula performances, kahuna
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Demographically, Japanese Hawaiians
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at schools. 255 Such pervasive draw
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half-jokingly he asked me, ‘Was t
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Michener’s claim that “these Or
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As may be expected, Sumida’s past
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various aspects that And the View f
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accumulation of several aspects in
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writers, exhibiting a neo-colonial
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without divinity to sustain them, h
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contract laborers, Stone of Kannon
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different groups anxiously saw to i
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into a complex and unfair world is
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advice as spells and protection rit
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hiding one’s true self, the ambig
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Gary Pak is another writer of Korea
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their lives and reminiscing on hers
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Fuckin’ Kahaluu used to be mean.
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future that is sharply contrasted b
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understands some of the inequities
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Page 127 and 128: joining their forebears. Jess will
Page 129 and 130: printed nothing but poems. Sentimen
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Page 133 and 134: adulthood and history. […] In bot
Page 135 and 136: You find you need China: your one f
Page 137 and 138: “and disappears”). One of the f
Page 139 and 140: In general, these poems reach beyon
Page 141 and 142: In “Tutu on da Curb,” the old l
Page 143 and 144: similarly reduced to gestures, look
Page 145 and 146: see that it doesn’t matter what f
Page 147 and 148: I thought of weather like a sailor
Page 149 and 150: the rubric “Asian Pacific America
Page 151 and 152: The texts collected in ‘Oiwi deal
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Page 155 and 156: had no rival in its casting of ligh
Page 157 and 158: Through a series of improvisational
Page 159 and 160: In colonial situations, resistance
Page 161 and 162: a homogeneous society. Their report
Page 163 and 164: I had been here nearly thirty years
Page 165 and 166: While this may be true, this statem
Page 167 and 168: tradition that is our own. […] we
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Page 171 and 172: You come with me In your dark brood
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Page 175: plantation hierarchy are especially
Page 179 and 180: Grace, easy. Joseph, easier. Blue-c
Page 181 and 182: other sensitive readers have been r
Page 183 and 184: In 1999, Marie Hara and Nora Okja K
Page 185 and 186: Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Filip
Page 187 and 188: mean, Asian, sistah? You Chinee, o
Page 189 and 190: Cantonese words. 465 In the 1820s,
Page 191 and 192: Standard system.” 472 In any case
Page 193 and 194: In spite of its widespread appeal i
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Page 197 and 198: poetry than the original: “What c
Page 199 and 200: As mentioned in the history chapter
Page 201 and 202: In Rodney Morales’ collection The
Page 203 and 204: da point.” The uncompromising Pid
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Page 215 and 216: 5.4.1 Reclaiming Hawaiian Space We
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Page 223 and 224: As Gayle Sato argues in her Amerasi
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Grant published such ‘factional
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It is still here, just like Hawai
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Mrs. Zane can speak several dialect
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flowers glowing like stars in the g
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While Native Hawaiian nationalists
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of an area that was to be cleared f
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outlook: “This is all, of course,
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Old Man and the Sea in their home t
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The most violent act James Cook cou
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slashed hand as if it were “somet
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unfolding, I wanted to swim toward
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In such passages, Davenport manages
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to our young Pacific writers: that
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though in a Local (Asian/native) co
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Balaz, Joe. Electric Laulau. CD. Ho
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Dissertation: University of Michiga
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Identity in the New Pacific. Pacifi
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McGaw, Martha Mary, Sister. Stevens
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the Rest of the World. London: Rout
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Trask, Haunani-Kay. From a Native D
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Appendix I: Hawaiian History in Dat
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1863: Kamehameha IV dies and is suc
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1924: The U.S. Congress passes Hawa
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