A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

As Gayle Sato argues in her Amerasia essay on Lum and his colleagues Darrell Lum and
Eric Chock, all three “engage the central themes of Chinese American history articulated
by ‘main’land writers, but their perspectives are shaped by Island influences.” 561 In Wing
Tek Lum’s case, she points to his “sense of generational continuity” as expressed in
references to family graves, “the sum total of our ancestors / who died in this place we
call home.” 562 The frequent image of the grave, usually associated with death and sadness,
is used by Lum to signify rootedness and connection, “a positive awareness that his life is
embedded in the history and land of Hawai’i.” 563 When Lum evokes specific places, as in
“A Moon Festival Picnic at Kahala Beach Park,” the local detail seems scant. However,
“to argue that this experience could happen anywhere is to miss Lum’s real attachment to
Hawaii, expressed with almost anxious understatement, as if to avoid all possibility of
exoticism.” 564 Again, the reference to place functions as a trigger of feeling continuity and
gratefulness for family and community.
In Eric Chock’s poetry, references to family and ancestral graves function in a
similar way. However, his poems contain the additional element of contemplative
spirituality, resulting in a point of view that accepts change and is able to convey the flow
of time. Sato invokes Thoreau, Whitman, and Frost to highlight Chock’s Localized
“wisdom […] absorbed from nature.” Thus, she links Chock’s “sensory meditation”
triggered by the highway encounter with a wild pig in “Pua’a: Nu’uanu” to Whitman’s
veneration of nature, wildlife, and sexual energy as well as to Thoreau’s perception of the
universal in the particular, the local, focusing however on the differences to these ‘great
white men.’ The poem title corroborates Chock’s commitment to place: Nu’uanu
signifies a verdant valley on Oahu as well as the adjacent part of the Ko’olau mountain
range. Nu’uanu Avenue leads from downtown Honolulu toward the island’s windward
side, away from the city into nature. Pua’a, the Hawaiian word for pig, imbues the animal
with a mythic, place-derived power. It is fishing, along with swimming and diving,
however, that provides Chock with an almost all-purpose metaphor for his meditations on
561 Gayle K. Fujita Sato, “The Island Influence on Chinese American Writers: Wing Tek Lum, Darrell H.Y.
Lum, and Eric Chock,” in Amerasia 16 No. 2 (1990): 17-33, here 17. Criticizing the transfer of
geographical notions of Hawaii’s peripheral position, Sato also notes that the authors “have produced work
of major importance, but [their] unfamiliarity to mainland readers reflects the marginalizing that has
occurred even within Asian American Studies.”
562 Lum 1987: 35 “It’s Something Our Family Has Always Done,” quoted in Sato 1990: 19.
563 Sato 1990: 22.
564 Ibid.: 21.
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