From Atlantic to Pacific: The Caribbean and Hawai’i

A historical link between the two oceans is provided by the case of the Caribbean island Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory up to the present day and annexed in 1898, the same year as Hawai’i and for the same strategic reason of providing the U.S. military with bases during the Spanish-American War. A comparison of the two island cultures - one Atlantic, the other Pacific - serves to underline the claim for the study of contemporary Hawaiian texts as a distinctive and a postcolonial body of literature.¹¹⁸

117 Andrew N. Weintraub, “Jawaiian and Local Cultural Identity in Hawai’i,” in Perfect Beat 1 No. 2 (January 1993): 78-89, here 86.

118 A recent dissertation by Elizabeth Mary DeLoughrey, Antipodean Archipelagoes: Post-Colonial Cartographies in Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures (Ann Arbor 1999), heralds itself as “the first critical investigation of the emergent literatures of the anglophone Caribbean and Pacific Islands”

(dissertation abstract, n.p.). Regrettably, as is the case with much Pacific Island scholarship, Hawai’i does not figure in her analysis (see chapter 3.2 for conceptions of the Pacific Basin/Oceania). The leitmotif of her comparative analyses of Caribbean and South Pacific texts is voyaging, ranging from ancient indigenous navigation and canoeing to modern migration and diaspora. DeLoughrey shows “the ways in which theories produced in one hemisphere ‘travel’ and acclimate to very distant landscapes. It is only by examining the two regions in relation that one can see that theories of diaspora in the Atlantic are being adopted, altered and challenged in the Pacific, and that indigeneity, usually associated with ‘first peoples’ such as Pacific Islanders, is also a subtext in the Caribbean” (DeLoughrey 1999: 324). This line of reasoning is echoed by Teresa Teaiwa’s explicit linking of contemporary ties and collaborations with “ancient routes of exchange”

across the Pacific, and by her appropriation of a discourse developed about the Atlantic: “Borrowing a notion from Black British scholar Paul Gilroy, I have come to understand, then, that to search for roots is to discover routes” (quoted in Subramani, “The Diasporic Imagination,” in Franklin et al. 2000: 173-86, here

If ‘the Caribbean’ is conveyed of reductively as one culture,¹¹⁹ then obviously the inhabitants of Hawai’i share several qualities with West Indians, such as

- strong retention of pre-contact and oral cultures due to island locale,

- a culture dominated by an exploitative plantation system (even ethnic diversity is due to this era),

- a language mix including indigenous and Creole languages, - and an identity historically imposed by a foreign culture.

Socially speaking, some of the common values of both island groups are the importance of the extended family, the community, and of the elders as repositories of knowledge.

Literary production has similar aspects too: island writers tend to have a small audience, a small publication market, a ‘small scale’ of literature, and a language dilemma (‘How can I/we express a creole experience in Standard English?’ versus ‘Who will buy, understand, and appreciate texts written in my/our vernacular?’) Oral traditions continue to influence written literature, as do traditional and hybrid art forms such as song and dance; chant, hula, and ‘Jawaiian’ music in Hawai’i, slave songs, Calypso, and Reggae in the West Indies.¹²⁰

Moreover, if Caribbean literature and culture are seen as tied to place rather than nation-bound, this is even truer in Hawai’i. Inhabitants of the West Indies are ‘creole’ not because of their citizenship, but due to their place of birth.¹²¹ In Hawai’i, a similar idea is that of the Local: you belong to the place, not to one people. However, the Hawaiian concept appears to be one more open to interpretation; the society or group decides who is an insider, a true ‘Local,’ whereas in the case of the Caribbean someone is either born creole or he is not. There are other distinctions to be made; Hawaii’s planters relied on indentured labor, but not on slavery. The oral cultures are different, too, probably due to their different origins and time frames: while both are perceived as talkative, even

179).

119 To clarify: Caribbean is an inclusive geographical term, incorporating both Francophone and

Anglophone islands as well as the few Spanish-speaking ones such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, whereas West Indian refers only to the English-speaking part of the region. Conflation of the two terms here does not obscure the points I intend to make.

120 In this context, it is interesting to note that Hawaiian musicians have adopted Reggae melodies and looks since the early 1980s. This musical style has been termed ‘Jawaiian’ (for the mixing of Jamaican and Hawaiian elements). Local hero Bruddah Waltah, for instance, wears dreadlocks and has released his own versions of songs like “No Woman No Cry.”

121 The word creole means ‘indigenous’ in French. It evolved in the Caribbean, now meaning ‘born in the West Indies,’ suggesting miscegenation, creolization, and acculturation as well as interculturation.

quarrelsome, requiring quickness of mind, delighting in verbal barters and fights, West Indian texts traditionally include participation by the audience and the repetition of speech fragments (as in Baptist churches); the Hawaiian tradition emphasizes wordplay, metaphor, the ambiguity and suggestiveness of language, its melody and beauty. ¹²²

Both literatures have produced a striking number of coming-of-age novels, tales of initiation.¹²³ The adolescent hero/ine who is on the verge of discovering her identity, her place in society, who often has to fight for her ideas and dreams, who usually faces disappointment and disenchantment when entering the adult world has become a topos for the experience of a postcolonial culture: s/he is a type specimen for depicting insecurity, inferiority, marginalization, but also for relating the urge for emancipation, identification, self-determination. On another level, it may be argued that the character of the kid, just about to grow up, is a result of and a reflection on the label ‘children of nature,’ the imperial and patronizing attitude that both island cultures have been facing since their respective discoveries. Thus, ‘coming of age’ becomes a metaphor for the coming of age of cultures. The adolescent quest for identity can be read as the search for a cultural, a literary identity.

With respect to the applicability of Caribbean postcolonial concepts to the Hawaiian situation, the Martinician poet and politician Aimé Césaire makes for a good example. His island, despite all its differences, shows the same paradox that can be observed in Hawai’i:

Politically, economically, and institutionally, she is part of France; geographically and psychologically, she is Caribbean. […] Most islanders appreciate the benefits, the security, and the prestige which the relationship with France affords, but the classical inequities of the colonial exploitation have not been erased and the self-evident, non-European ancestry of the vast majority of Martiniquais is everywhere apparent to the naked eye.¹²⁴

122 In the Caribbean, we find various African influences, brought in with the slave migrations, and almost no traces of the extinct Carib or Arawak Indians, whereas the (native) Hawaiian culture is related to other Polynesian ones and was established in ancient times.

123 See for example: Olive Senior, The Arrival of the Snake Woman, New York 1989, Edwige Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory, New York 1998, and George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin, Ann Arbor 1991, for the Caribbean; the novels of Murayama, Yamanaka, Holt, and Salisbury, or several short stories of Darrell Lum and Rodney Morales for Hawai’i.

124 Susan Frutkin, Aimé Césaire: Black between Worlds, Miami 1973: 2, 4. The author shares this duality paradox with his native island: his eloquent 1937 poem “Cahier D’Un Retour Au Pays Natal” reveals him to be “a fine product of the very cultural assimilation process which he deplores” (Frutkin 1973: 17).

Hawai’i is a U.S. state, but its inhabitants live on Pacific islands whose heritage is Polynesian, whose current population has been imported to a large extent. To be sure, looking at the respective histories, French colonial policies differ from American territorial ones, and the population mix is made up of different ethnicities. Still, Martinician ideas about colonialism have spread over the world; ‘négritude’ and ‘Black Pride’ are concepts that emerged from here. Although Césaire’s ideas have been developed in a black and French colonial context, they can be fruitfully employed to examine a native Hawaiian and U.S. imperial situation. His thoughts are echoed for example in Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s analysis of the continuing influence of the plantation system and the resulting ethnic stratification of Local society, or in Garrett Hongo’s feelings about being a postcolonial subject.¹²⁵ Haunani Kay Trask’s manifesto of indigenous Hawaiian sovereignty, From A Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i, reiterates Césaire’s reflections: among his goals were retracing his island’s cultural heritage, including the slave trade, and reviving cultural pride. With his writings, he intended to provoke a new consciousness and, subsequently, a black identity. The practical application of his ideas in Martinique resulted in a creole dialect school and a municipal school for dance, music, and art. All this corresponds to the development of the ‘Hawaiian Renaissance.’

In addition, Trask frequently refers to Frantz Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.¹²⁶ His books deal with the psychological as well as the political implications of colonialism, and again, with questions of power and

Proclaiming pride and beauty in being black, the text was a scandal and well ahead of its time. The

‘négritude’ concept introduced by the poem formed the basis and core of all colored movements after World War II. His 1955 essay “Discours Sur Le Colonialisme” has been influential for postcolonial studies, as it challenges the equation of colonization and civilization, arguing that colonialism has only produced dehumanization. He weighs the alleged ‘progress’ against the innumerable losses of indigenous peoples, intending their apology. To him, the perpetuating factors of colonialism are paternal attitudes, recycled racial prejudices, and imperialist chauvinism. These culminate in statements such as ‘negroes are big children.’ Such infantilization of the ‘other’ is a pervasive mechanism of empire. In the U.S. expansion period around the Spanish-American War, political cartoons depicted “a stern disciplinarian Uncle Sam”

lecturing “four recalcitrant ‘children’ under his tutelage: Queen Lili‘uokalani from Hawai’i, Emilio Aguinaldo from the Philippines, and the child leaders of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Lili’uokalani was also represented in political cartoons as a young girl, alternately characterized as an African American child – Topsy from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin pleading forgiveness from a stern Miss Columbia – or as a child in Native American dress begging to be admitted into Miss Columbia’s schoolhouse”

(Fujikane 1996: 222). Today, native Hawaiians remain ‘wards of the state’ (see also chapter 5.2.2 on sovereignty).

125 See chapter 5.1.4.

126 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, London 1986, and The Wretched of the Earth, London 1967.

Both texts were translated into English from earlier French versions.

identity. Dennis Walder thinks that The Wretched of the Earth “has spoken more directly, profoundly, and lastingly than any other single anti-colonial work on behalf of and to the colonized.”¹²⁷ In Trask’s case, Fanon’s thoughts have shaped her strategy for the decolonization of Hawai’i. It is important to note the limiting exclusiveness that was introduced to Caribbean writing with the politicization of literature in the 60s and 70s:

artists that were not deemed ‘black’ enough were subject to harsh criticism and assaults.

As the example of the Lois-Ann Yamanaka controversy in chapter 5.2.5 will show, race and representation continue to be sensitive issues.

Given the various affinities and similarities between Caribbean and Hawaiian culture, it seems legitimate to try and transfer Barbadian Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s model of creolization, “a cross-cultural time-space dynamic,” to the Hawaiian situation.

Its most fundamental aspect is the relationship to land, to place. “Creolization is a cultural action based upon the ‘stimulus-response’ of individuals to their environment and, within culturally discrete white-black groups, to each other.”¹²⁸ Brathwaite’s elaborations on

‘nation language’ as presented in History of the Voice¹²⁹ may also be helpful in highlighting the important role and function of Hawaiian Creole English, HCE, in Hawaiian literature and culture. In this essay he defines ‘nation language’ as “the language of the people – crucially, it is not an elite language – who are finding different ways of giving voice to their experiences which refuse the inherited European models and break out of their confines,” thus claiming “artistic dignity and aesthetic sophistication for a use of English which might be seen by some as sub-standard or bastardised.”¹³⁰ Finding the courage and confidence to employ one’s vernacular for literary uses is an issue in Hawai’i too. Lois-Ann Yamanaka, who uses HCE boldly and creatively, states: “I heard this my whole life. Pidgin is a hindrance to island children. Contributes to low SAT scores. A handicap. A bastardization. Going nowhere. Being nothing.”¹³¹ And yet, during the last two or three decades, Pidgin has been utilized, molded, and valued by creative writers who have dared to defy mainstream assumptions.

127 Walder 1998: 57.

128 Ashcroft et al. 1989: 147.

129 Edward Kamau Brathwaite, History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, London/Port of Spain 1984.

130 McLeod 2000: 128-9.

131 Renee H. Shea, “Lois-Ann Yamanaka: Pidgin Politics and Paradise Revised,” in Poets & Writers Magazine (September/October 1998): 32-9, here 33.

Another common aspect of discarding European models is the need to coin appropriate forms for non-European experiences: “The hurricane doesn’t roar in pentameters. And that’s the problem: how do you get a rhythm which approximates the natural experience, the environmental experience?”¹³² Brathwaite concentrated on poetry and song, but his ideas may be applied to other genres as well.

The Pacific writer, more often than not, takes his or her role as the voice of the oppressed seriously. The message is therefore often more important than the medium. If the oppressor gets the message clearly and forcefully, so much the better. Indeed, this was characteristic of Pacific writing published in the early sixties and seventies. It was sharp, critical, powerful, and often adversarial. This was a necessary first step for Pacific writers, some of whom did not proceed beyond this intial stage. For them, political independence was the culmination of their literary efforts. The more serious among them persisted, often writing about the same issues as before with just as much fervor, but with more attention paid to style and technique. For them, good writing was more than a weapon; it was also an art.

Vilsoni Hereniko – “Pacific Island Literature”¹³³