A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

p’ane.” 505 Sung Wha’s Pidgin evolves, but with no glossing on the part of the author, one
either has to be Local or put in some effort to understand what he is saying. From
sentences like “I no regret dem days. Da stuff I experience, you can fill one book wit
‘em” (210), one can derive principles of pronunciation, syntax, and tense marking.
Reading aloud helps with examples such as “one nada,” “every ada year,” or “Den,
youknowwhatImeanden” (6). But what do you do if you encounter directions like “I think
da mauka kokohead cornah” (ibid. Mauka is “towards the mountain,” while “kokohead”
refers to an island off O’ahu’s windward coast, which would make it the north-east
corner, if the speaker was in a Honolulu hospital). The characteristic doubling of
adjectives and other words for emphasis also abounds. As for consistency, note for
example that Pak opted for d instead of th in words like dey, da, dem, but left the th intact
in think which for some writers becomes tink. Again, each writer has to make choices,
and Pak has very consciously decided not to gloss, italicize, or otherwise mark his Pidgin
passages:
I’m coming from this sort of culture, from this community, and this is the
language. […] People on the mainland, once they start getting the hang of it,
they’re going to get a much deeper understanding of our culture, the way we had
to learn about other cultures in Hawai’i. I think we understand a large part of the
culture of the mainland because of what we’ve gotten: movies, television, books
we had to read. We had to learn how to read Hawthorne, Melville, Shakespeare.
And even the modern writers – we have to learn how to read them. It’s the same
thing. 506
This may also serve to hint at the inevitability of Local art being political, in the broadest
sense. Similarly, Michael McPherson states: “In my literary writing, I stubbornly persist
in the notion that if readers outside Hawaii, or new to Hawaii, want to understand who we
are and what we are about, then it is their obligation to immerse themselves and learn.
[…] I do not provide notes or explanations.” 507 Such a position may reflect the native
concept of kuleana, being privileged and responsible for being Hawaiian, as extended to
one’s readers. At the same time, it fits the connotations of the Local requiring an ‘insider’
perspective.
505 Pak 1998: 76.
506 Cheung 2000: 309-10.
507 Michael McPherson, “The Absent King Quartet,” in ‘Oiwi No. 1 (1998): 114-44, here 115.
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