A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

mean, Asian, sistah? You Chinee, o wat?’” 458 In a multi-ethnic environment like Hawaii,
specificity is paramount; people are proud to identify their (mixed) genealogies. Insecure
about her ethnic identity, the well-educated woman loses her patience when faced with
ignorant people and forms that cannot accommodate difference: “‘Where I come from,
brah, you’re a haole, and nobody cares if a haole is French or Swedish or Welsh.’ I
snatched the form from his hand and put an X where it said OTHER and filled in the
blank with Chinese-Hawaiian-Irish. I got the loan anyway.” 459
To sum up, being hapa engenders confusion, insecurity, but also empowerment.
Mixed people are forced to ask themselves who and what they are, almost on a daily
basis. They are alternately desired and loathed by ‘pure’ people for their suggestion of
ambiguity, serving as a reminder “that things are not as clear cut (i.e., half-and-half) as
they seem,” and “that the ‘us’ and ‘them’ division may be imaginary. The kernel of fear
inherent in this view may be precisely why hapas and half breeds are so reviled in some
parts of the world. The race which is not one reflects the partiality and resultant anxiety
that resides in everyone, calling up painful divisions and uncertainties.” 460 On the other
hand, in a place where mixed people are a majority, ruminated prejudices and
exhortations to ‘marry only your own kind’ become increasingly meaningless: In Lee
Tonouchi’s short story “Where to Put Your Hands” for example, the young narrator
reflects on the merits of a multiethnic setup, desiring a hapa girlfriend against the advice
of his grandmother: “Joy would be perfeck if wuzn’t fo’ dat ethnicity ting. I mean
mo’bettah ah if she all mix up anykine. Cuz like dogs fo’example, those pure bred kine,
dey die young. But da kine poi dog, dey live long time ah. 461
458 Yokanaan Kearns, “Confessions of a Stupid Haole,” in Bamboo Ridge No. 73 (Spring 1998): 192-303,
here 195.
459 Kearns 1998: 196.
460 Lance in Hara/Keller 1999: 371.
461 Lee Tonouchi, Da Word, Honolulu 2001: 31. Poi dog is the Pidgin term for a mongrel dog, poi being
taro pudding, main staple of the ancient Hawaiians.
179