A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

The awkward way of tagging participants shows that a more encompassing term like
‘local literature’ was yet to be found. Maxine Hong Kingston attended the conference and
wrote the foreword for the anthology Talk Story, a collection of short fiction, poetry, and
short plays by writers who “have lived some time in Hawai’i,” intended to showcase what
had been accomplished so far by Local authors. Tentatively, Kingston stated that “writers,
who do not ignore daily life, must be somehow affected by the cadences of local speech
and the shades of the local green.” 252 She noted that “when children here draw trees, I am
struck that their archetypal tree is a palm when mine is an oak.” Looking for “patterns,”
she registers the growing confidence in employing Hawaiian Creole English,
predominantly in the plays, as the language “must be spoken for full beauty and
power.” 253 Other prominent features are ethnic markers, an emphasis on locale, and,
especially in the poetry, the creation of “mysterious and evocative imagery.” 254 These are
all traits that would intensify over time, and that enable today’s reader to identify Local
writing. Much of the writing dealt with generational or intercultural conflict, or was quite
simply about one’s roots and heritage. The quest for identity and self-expression is a
typical theme of an emergent literature; its infusion with insecurity and anger has been
identified by Fanon as a stage in the development of an emancipated literature.
The selection of poets for the Talk Story anthology marks a generational break as
well as the general turn to ethnic Local writers: Claiming that the young aspiring poets
anthologized are the first ones to publish poetry in the islands, the editors omit a largely
‘academic’ production of poetry that was anthologized one year later in Poetry Hawaii, a
slightly more inclusive volume featuring the mentioned young Local poets but also those
who were not born in the Islands and mostly came to teach at the University of Hawai’i or
original experience of the 1978 conference: “Not between bookcovers, though books turned out to be
abundant, but within Hawaii’s ethnic communities was the locus of the literary tradition Bushnell and many
others were furthering, the one I call here the Local. Now, with the open introduction of their literary works,
the locus could reside in books as well, books which Bushnell was warning may not exist” (241). His
description of the conference’s setup corroborates the idea of Local literature as a communal endeavor,
rooted in place and an oral, informal tradition: “Talk Story’s audiences and activities included writers and
teachers, to be sure, and also laborers, fishermen and fisherwomen, politicians, a drama group of the deaf,
lawyers, garage mechanics, insurance sellers, nightclub entertainers, homemakers, shopkeepers, store
clerks, military personnel, farmers, secretaries, dentists, meetings disguised as parties, literary readings with
very heavy pupu or refreshments, a rummage sale, and benefit sales of such island delicacies and
innovations for the occasion as smoked marlin, kalua chicken, and boiled peanuts” (250).
252 Chock et al. 1978: 5.
253 Ibid.: 6.
254 Ibid.: 66.
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