A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

I am a man that happens to be white, but I’ve got feelings too. You know? It is
possible for me to love this land. It is possible for me to identify with this culture.
But I am rejected because I had, and I repeat had, power. That was my family, not
me, not me as an individual. I’ve lost my right to belong anywhere. I hate the
mainland. I don’t know those people. I don’t get along with them. I don’t speak
their language. I speak yours. 259
The conference was also the birthplace of Bamboo Ridge Press, “a non-profit, tax-exempt
organization formed to foster the appreciation, understanding, and creation of literary,
visual, audio-visual and performing arts by and about Hawaii’s people.” 260 Besides
forming a writers’ group that discussed each other’s works-in-progress, the publication of
a regular literary journal was the collective’s main goal. Starting out as a quarterly,
Bamboo Ridge evolved into a half-yearly journal over time, alternating irregularly
between collections of diverse texts, single writer’s issues, and thematic anthologies. The
objective was to attract and publish “a representative array of the best writing about
Hawai’i by people of different ethnic backgrounds, a literary picture which was almost
non-existent at the time, […] an alternative to the mainstream, white literary canon” 261
When poet and Bamboo Ridge editor Eric Chock became president of the Hawai’i
Literary Arts Council (HLAC) in 1979, his vision was to localize the organization’s goal,
namely, to “bring before the people of Hawaii the great importance of literature.”
Viewing his presidency as “part of not a revolutionary process but an evolutionary
process,” he expressed the hope that this process would “eventually lead to local literature
being taught in the schools in Hawaii.” 262 In the same context, Chock recalls the director
of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (SFCA) congratulating him: “And only
259 Quoted from Chock et al. 1978: 130.
260 Original mission statement, quoted from Eric Chock, “The Neocolonization of Bamboo Ridge:
Repositioning Bamboo Ridge and Local Literature in the 1990s,” in Bamboo Ridge No. 69 (Spring 1996):
11-25, here 11. Importantly, ‘Bamboo Ridge’ here means more than a publishing venue. Bamboo Ridge:
The Hawaii Writers Journal is only one project of a writing community, with study groups, writing
workshops and readings, and authors taking volunteer positions to enable publication. As Lois-Ann
Yamanaka once said: “We’re a big dysfunctional family because we squabble and fight, but in the end, like
families, we make up and move forward” (Shea 1998: 35). The originally biological Hawaiian term ‘ohana
for the extended family has often been employed to signify ‘elected’ families, too. This is, however, a
corruption of the resonant meaning in the Hawaiian language, which links ‘ohana to the islands’ soil and
the plants that grow in it. For an elaboration on the connotations of the word ‘ohana, see also footnote #
530 on page 203, and the quotation it refers to.
261 Chock 1996: 12.
262 Eric Chock, “On Local Literature,” in Eric Chock/Jody Manabe (eds.), Writers of Hawaii: A Focus on
Our Literary Heritage, Honolulu 1981: 1-2, here 1.
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