A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

various aspects that And the View from the Shore provides, I will now present and analyze
the issues which mark the contemporary literature from Hawai’i as Local.
What are you called (i.e., your given name)? Who is your family (i.e., your surname and genealogy)?
Where are you from (i.e., your neighborhood or district)? And who is your teacher (i.e., your school or the
way of thought to which you are loyal)? …without their knowing its Hawaiian origins, locals expect this
5. Literature as Exploration of Local Identity
genealogical exchange.
Stephen Sumida – And the View from the Shore 284
The paramount issue of Local writing seems to be identity, located within the parameters
of history, ethnicity, language, and place. It is striking how the prefaces and introductions
of anthologies from Hawai’i reveal a common objective: Besides showcasing Native,
ethnic, or award-winning writers, evoking place, promoting diversity, or championing
sovereignty, they all attempt to answer the question “What is a Hawaiian/a Local?” An
impressive array of collections searches for the elusive identity of a multivocal and
postcolonial culture. Frank Stewart, for example, editor of the 1987 collection Passages
to the Dream Shore: Short Stories of Contemporary Hawai’i, elaborates on his selection
by inferring a syncretism of time, place, and lineage:
Stories, however, have the power to show the passage of time, and especially how
time impresses the island landscape into the hearts and thoughts of the people.
[…] They show that here, as in few other places in America, ancestry and memory
are still vivid, the past is intertwined with the present, and for all its modernness
Hawai’i is a place that continues to be profoundly sacred. 285
The editor also mentions that the authors he picked were all still alive, had written the
selected pieces within the previous decade, and that they were long-time residents, or
born and raised in the Islands. Though he does not use the term, the last specification
makes them as Local as their stories are by virtue of the interweaving of decisive
284 Sumida 1991: xvii.
285 Frank Stewart (ed.), Passages to the Dream Shore: Short Stories of Contemporary Hawaii, Honolulu
1987: vii.
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