A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

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standin’ on is not the freakin’ meltin’ pot but one volcano. And one day, the thing goin’ erupt and you guys goin’ be the first ones for burn” (70). One striking aspect that Linmark also shares with Yamanaka is that though the characters have to struggle and are treated badly in their respective communities, they cannot help but love the place they are from, the place they call home. Thus, with a chapter entitled “Kalihi is in the Heart,” Linmark bows to Carlos Bulosan, preeminent Filipino writer who was the first to deal creatively with the American sojourn and its attendant prejudices. As gay Filipino teenagers in a poor Honolulu suburb, Edgar and Vicente are doubly marginalized and the victims of multiple stereotypes. Nevertheless, they face the challenges with daydreams about being Farah Fawcett or Donna Summer, and with the fast and flexible mouths of quick-witted Locals. Mrs. Miyasato, my kindergarten teacher, said I was ‘cosmopolitan,’ and my five-year-old brain thought ‘neapolitan,’ but I got the idea: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry – why settle for one thing when 5.2.6 Being of Mixed Ethnicity: Hapa you could have all three? Donna Midori Hokumalamalama King Lance – “To Halve and to Halve Not” 450 Today, about 40 percent of Hawaii’s population are of racially mixed ancestry, hapa, part something or other. While identification with one or more of one’s ethnic components can theoretically be chosen, one’s name(s), looks, and family relations restrict such apparent freedom in various contexts. Compared to their mainland counterparts, who often feel more exposed and insecure because of the apparent singularity of their situation, mixed people in Hawai’i are a majority, and are perceived as a logical consequence of the setup of a multi-ethnic island community. While Hawaii’s plantation owners had practiced racial segregation, miscegenation may have been easier in an environment with no racial majorities and close proximity of many diverse people. 450 Donna Midori Hokumalamalama King Lance, “To Halve and to Halve Not,” in Marie Hara/Nora Okja Keller (eds.), Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose, Honolulu 1999: 370-5, here 370. 174
In 1999, Marie Hara and Nora Okja Keller edited an anthology called Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose, collecting an array of imaginative explorations and biographical accounts of what it means to be the offspring of more than one race. Local voices mingle with mainland ones, showing the different outlooks on the issue, corroborated by the age of the writer: In her introduction “Negotiating the Hyphen,” Marie Hara states that “I was born when my existence was still stigmatized, into a long historical line of hapa people whose alliances and identity had also been questioned. […] We were caught in an either/or-ness that marked our generations with a specific racial intolerance.” 451 Her co-editor Keller, on the contrary, recalls that she “had grown up in Hawai’i at a time when hapa was hip. In Honolulu during the seventies and eighties ‘Eurasian’ was considered beautiful, cosmopolitan, exotic. Friends, both Asian and haole, would say, ‘You’re so lucky to be hapa. Best of both worlds’” (19). Being hapa is being hybrid. This may engender mixed feelings of insecurity, alientation, or an anxious desire to fit into neat categories, to pass for one part or the other. In Susan Nunes’ short story “Hybrid” the hapa narrator’s childhood friend is pure Japanese. Her name, however, indicates the ambiguity of hybridity: “Naomi is in fact a curious name, Western when written in English, but Japanese when written in kanji.” 452 Significantly, “Naomi’s father raised orchids. It was both business and passion. I now understand there are almost a thousand genera of orchidaceae, nearly twenty thousand species, and an even greater number of hybrids, bred for their vigor and strength, their ease of care” (71). The narrator loves the orchid greenhouse, but when Naomi’s ancient grandmother shows them the parent plant, she is harshly reminded of her own mixedness: “The old woman looked fondly at Naomi and spoke again. I caught the English word ‘purebred.’ She was trying to describe, I now realize, what made the plant special. But something in the meeting of the word and the experience alienated me. I felt alone. Different. Not like them” (72-3). Giving no explicit reason, the narrator recalls coming back to destroy the plant, “to crush each flower, […] and to rub away all traces of the white roots.” She ends her childhood recollection on a wistful note: “She was my first 451 Hara/Keller 1999: 10. 452 Susan Miho Nunes, “Hybrid,” in Hara/Keller 1999: 68-73, here 69. An earlier version of the story appeared as “The Grandmother” in Nunes’ 1982 collection A Small Obligation and Other Stories of Hilo. 175
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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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make a major mainland publishing sp
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joining their forebears. Jess will
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printed nothing but poems. Sentimen
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Page 139 and 140: In general, these poems reach beyon
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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
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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
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Page 171 and 172: You come with me In your dark brood
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Page 179 and 180: Grace, easy. Joseph, easier. Blue-c
Page 181: other sensitive readers have been r
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,
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Page 197 and 198: poetry than the original: “What c
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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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