A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

chapter will illustrate. After the portrayal of Local literature’s prehistory and the
consolidation phase of the 1970s and early 1980s, contemporary literature will emerge on
a thematic map of convergence and commonality.
Canonical issues are nevertheless largely the responsibility of critics and scholars, who in
Hawaii’s and, in general, ethnic American literary studies have been far more scarce than writers, it seems
– the reverse of the boast or the complaint that in any year thousands study and may attempt to publish
articles on, say, one Shakespeare, one Melville, one Dickinson, or one Twain.
4.1 The University’s Role and Its Relevant Institutions
Stephen H. Sumida – And the View from the Shore 202
The University of Hawai’i is proudly cast by its historiographers as “unique as America’s
mid-ocean, tropical, multicultural university” and lauded for its “extraordinary” rise. It is
also seen as a powerful agent of social change, as when the development of a statewide
system in 1965 answered to a growing demand for higher education: “Young people of all
ethnicities and economic levels saw career opportunities rarely envisioned by their
parents and grandparents – especially in Hawaii, where most of those forebears had lived
in plantation villages.” 203 To reiterate, the paradoxical net effect of World War II and
subsequent statehood was an increased exposure to American ideas and a growing
realization of the possibilities for those who went beyond what hegemonic discourse
would have them believe. A college education in Hawai’i or on the mainland in turn
fostered both an awareness of human rights movements and an understanding of ethnic
and cultural diversity and inequities. Persons exposed to such education have been
instrumental in the Hawaiian Renaissance and sovereignty movement as well as in the
Asian/Local cultural nationalism exemplified by Talk Story and Bamboo Ridge. In more
general terms, the University has had a huge impact not only on the political and
economic lives of Hawaii’s peoples, but also on the “unique multiculture of this state.” Its
202 Sumida 1991: 269.
203 Robert M Kamins and Robert E. Potter, Malamalama: A History of the University of Hawai’i, Honolulu
1998: 306. However, the authors have to admit that this “did not happen uniformly among ethnic groups,
for in the student body at Manoa the proportion of Native Hawaiians, of Filipinos, and of other more recent
immigrant groups continued to lag” (308).
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