A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

intermingling… It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the
Pure. 71
Rushdie found a very positive metaphor for his celebration of this metamorphosis:
“Perhaps we all are, black and brown and white, leaking into one another, as a character
of mine once said, like flavours when you cook.” 72 This idea raises interesting questions
about the retention or loss of individual selfhood, about melting pot, mosaic, or salad
bowl. In Hawai’i, multiculturalism is represented by the harmonious image of the
rainbow, another fruitful yet deeply ambiguous metaphor, and a daily phenomenon in the
islands. Every child knows the seven spectral colors of the rainbow, but they blend into
one another and are basically a visual spectacle, intangible, a mere play of the light. What
can be more elusive than a rainbow?
Please note that the last U.S. Census reported that there are more Hawaiians in California than
in Hawaii. I have wondered what that says about American society, about Hawaii. About the Hawaiians
themselves? Many are alarmed by this and call it a diaspora. Others say that it is healthy. Perhaps it is
2.2.2 Exile / Migration
simply the global way here in the late Twentieth Century.
Christine Kirk-Kuwaye – “Sister from Another Planet” 73
Another common feature of postcolonial literatures is their concern with place and with
displacement. Dislocation (taken both literally and figuratively) and cultural denigration
effected by the imperial power engender a struggle for possible local/place-bound
identities. This commonly starts with the perception of a gap between the experience of
place and the language available to describe it, which can be a signifier of alienation but
also the source of creative energy employed to either overcome or highlight that gap.
Critics and writers such as Palestinian-born U.S. resident Edward Said or Indian-born
British resident Salman Rushdie employ metaphors of exile to paraphrase experiences of
displacement. They have realized that exile, expatriation, migration, and diaspora are
71 Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991, London 1991: 18.
72 Quoted in Richard Todd, “Salman Rushdie’s ‘Privileged Arenas,’” in Barfoot/D’Haen 1993: here 69.
73 In Eric Chock/James R. Harstad/Darrell H.Y. Lum/Bill Teter (eds.) Growing Up Local: An Anthology of
Poetry and Prose from Hawai’i, Honolulu 1998: 300-07, here 301.
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