A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

ones, but children, idiots, bums, and assorted antiheroes and buffoons.” 490 In Darrell
Lum’s short story “Beer Can Hat,” first published in 1979, the narrator is a child and the
other main character a mentally retarded newsboy. However, the text is a milestone for
Local literature: As Sumida elaborates, Lum
published what may very well be the first narrative, beyond a mere sketch and
dialogue, delivered entirely in the vernacular as it is actually spoken. Moreover,
Lum crafted his pidgin narrative without having to translate terms for the benefit
of audiences initially unfamiliar with the lingo of the current slang. The unbroken
pidgin narration implies that the language can be taken in its own terms – that is,
Lum’s story assumes that the vernacular is understandable, not gibberish, if, of
course, the uninitiated reader will pay careful attention to the context to learn what
unfamiliar terms mean as the reading proceeds. 491
Darrell Lum’s short stories deserve their place on the Hawaiian school reading lists both
because they are brilliant examples of the ‘small kid time’ formula, testing its limits, and
because of their accessibility. His frequently staged plays such as Oranges are Lucky
reveal a similar conscientiousness and aptitude at transferring multilingual family
contexts to literature as Murayama’s writing does: While the Chinese thoughts of an
immigrant grandmother are rendered as formal Standard English, the nuances of English
and Pidgin can again be best appreciated by a Local audience familiar with such code-
switching and with generational rifts that extend to linguistic incompatibility. As a
counterargument to charges of insularity and simplicity, Sumida invokes the classic status
of Huckleberry Finn, asking, “Why in American literature should nonstandard English
written by a white man be the mark of greatness while it condemns a local Hawai’i writer
to obscurity?” 492
In oral/performative genres such as drama and stand-up comedy, Pidgin naturally
found its fixed place much earlier than in fiction and poetry. A hilarious example is the
1974 Kumu Kahua production of James Grant Benton’s Shakespeare adaptation Twelf
Nite O Wateva! The Pidgin rendering of Shakespearian dialogue has no less wit and
490 Sumida 1991: 101. Sumida recalls Chin’s assessment from a literary workshop held at Honolulu in 1979,
while Hershinow’s criticism is expressed in his aforementioned article (Hershinow 1982: here 9-10).
491 Sumida 1991: 102. “Beer Can Hat” has been rewritten several times for republication. Lum modified his
Pidgin orthography to come closer to authentic pronunciation. The same applies, for example, to Eric
Chock’s poem “Tutu on da Curb.”
492 Sumida 1991: 103.
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