A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Necessity and Extravagance” (Wong 1993: 203-4). The narrator who cannot translate the
meaning of her mother’s stories into her reality resorts to imaginative play, extravagantly
fleshing out the meager stories of a mother who “has told me once and for all the useful
parts. She will add nothing unless powered by Necessity, a riverbank that guides her life”
(Kingston 1989: 6). However, the book’s final story is a hopeful hybrid: “The beginning
is hers, the ending, mine.” It speaks of a communal appreciation of art, an art that is
finally communication: “It translated well” (208-9).
Although far too diverse to be called a ‘school’ of literature, there is a community of
writers that shares a determination to fight the travel posters, the popular literature, and the mass media
stereotypes of Hawaii. By writing about themselves and the people around them – about life as they know it
– these writers are, for the first time, creating a literature of Hawaii instead of a literature about Hawaii.
Sheldon Hershinow – “Coming of Age? The Literature of Contemporary Hawaii” 201
4. The Birth of a Contemporary Local Literature
Today, Local literature can be said to incorporate three ethnically marked ‘traditions:’
- A Caucasian one that is connected with the University of Hawai’i and bears the weight
of the historical haole hegemony. Most contemporary haole writing sharply contrasts
with the pervasive earlier modes of ‘outsider’ literature that will be portrayed below in
chapter 4.2.
- A Native Hawaiian one that has its roots in pre-contact indigenous writing and in the
effects of the ‘Hawaiian Renaissance.’
- A mostly Asian-dominated one that consolidated itself at the 1978 Talk Story
conference and labeled itself ‘local.’
However, the overarching Local themes of loss, history, ethnicity, language, place,
and identity are found in all of them. Across all the differences and unevenness, a
common Local way of seeing and representing has evolved. Moreover, the separate
strands are increasingly being interwoven by market, audience, and other
economic/sociocultural factors, as the references to Hawaii’s cultural infrastructure in this
201 Sheldon Hershinow, “Coming of Age? The Literature of Contemporary Hawaii,” in Bamboo Ridge 13
(Winter 81/82): 5-10, here 8.
62