Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 6, 1 Iune 2008 — Honolulu inspires mixed plate of stories [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Honolulu inspires mixed plate of stories

By Liza Simnn Puhlie Affairs Specialist Got Honolulu Literature? There is no bumper sticker asking this question, but this might change with the newly published mega-anthology H o n o 1 u 1 u

Some- N thing for everyone: Honolulu Stories

packs in 350 writings from opera fo oli. Availūble ūf loeol bookstores - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Stories, whieh uses 350 pieces of "imaginative writing" from opera to oli to describe, deconstruct, debunk and just generally talk story about our fair city. Okay, sometimes it's not such a fair city, but a vulnerable island coimnunity "responding to everincreasing doses of the mainland," said Gavan Daws, author and eoeditor of the new 1,100 page-plus tome. "There is tension between what is here and what is dumped in, and how all this is dealt with." The book seizes on this tension by juxtaposing wildly divergent accounts of various stages in the growth of Honolulu over the last two centuries - from a fictionalized whaling adventure of the late 1800s whose central character is "relieved" not to encounter eannibals to a prayer written by Queen Lili'uokalani during her imprisonment inside 'Iolani Palaee. The subsequent sections are full of faultlines of perception between the insider and outsider, the indigenous and the immigrant, the colonized and colonizer, even

the celebrity writer and the creative child. Selections by the likes of Maxine Hong Kingston and Mark Twain are placed side by side with poems by Hawai'i elementary school kids. Taken as a hefty whole, Honoluhi Stories illuminates the literary mystery of how a single

subject inspires so many different truths - emohonal truths that cut

deeper than "just

f the facts, ma' am." But whose truth is mo st profound? Whieh

literary voices have the power to heal? Whieh ones conjure memorable characters? Whieh ones simply perpetuate pilikia by pandering to stereotype? These questions eeho throughout loeal literary history, as Daws recounts in the introduction to Honohihi Stories. Not that he looked for literary controversy or even history when he signed on to do the project with co-editorBennettHymer, founder of Mutual Publishing. The duo did want to take a different tack from other anthology editors by avoiding the conventional recycling of eanonieal material by literary masters, a.k.a. "dead white men." So began their hunt for literary treasures - mueh of it previously unpublished. Eschewing any public solicitation, they put out the word on the coconut wireless and it led them to several unexpected destinations, such as the attic of a Leeward Coast home, where a loeal woman had carefully preserved pages of elegant poems about Honolulu written

in Portuguese by her inmiigrant grandfather. Daws said one aini was to eapture the Native Hawaiian passion for words, so the editors sought help from Kaupena Wong, Eddie Kamae and Puakea Nogehneier. "We did not expect to find fichonal short stories from the early years, because this was not a hterary fonn favored by Hawahans, but thanks to assistance from our Hawaiian language experts we were delighted to find out we were wrong," said Daws, pointing to the book's first chapter selection, "A Romance," from a long-run-ning serial by an unknown author that first appeared in Ka Leo o ka Lāluii, one of many Hawaiian language newspapers in the 1890s. Daws and Hymer also eollected several pieces that track the loss of 'ōlelo Hawai'i and its subsequent revival. The polhieal hnphcations of Hawaiian language suppression by foreigners is a theme woven into works of many contributors such as Mahealani Perez-Wendt and others who eame of age during the so-called Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, whieh revived Hawaiian arts as an expression of indigenous identity. Daws said one of the most heartening trends uncovered in the making of Honohihi Stories was that the new bumper crop of Hawaiian studies alumni have used theh fluency in 'ōlelo Hawai'i to create "imaginative writings" about varied topics - including Honolulu. Appearing in the chapter "Around the Island," Kapulani Landgraf has written "He Au Ko'olau La" or "That is Ko'olau Weather"; it's an atmospheric poem illustrating that Landgraf, who is a professional photographer known for her black and white portraits of Hawaiian places, also has a corresponding talent for using words to take compelling snapshots of the Hawaiian envhomnent. Indeed, readers may be surprised to find that many of the featured writers in the new anthology work in professions far afield from literature. Perhaps the book may bring out the "inner Honolulu storyteller" in you. □