8
street roots
April 15, 2011
The Aloha
State's
turbulent
relations
In exam ining H aw aii’s past,
author a n d radio personality
Sarah Vowell sees the best a n d
worst o f American history
BY ROBERT ALFORD
• C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
arah Vowell is a very, very busy
person. She’s the New YorK'Times
bestselling authpr of “Assassination
Vacation” and “The Wordy Shipmates,” a
frequent contributor to Public Radio
; International’s “This American Life” and
she serves on the board of Dave Egger’s
educational nonprofit organization 826NYC.
S
She even lënï h e r traaem ^ k a ^ a p a n vocal',
delivery to Pixar’s 2004 animated feature
“The Incredibles.”
Vowell’s writing combines conventions of
history, journalism and tongue-in-cheek
satire that is often as hilarious as it is '
thought-provoking. She revels in the
absurdities and contradictions of American
history, exposing the hypocrisies of power
while remaining personally committed to
the ideals upon which our democracy was
founded. Her latest book, “Unfamiliar
Fishes,” explores the history of Hawaii, and
the American missionaries, sailors,
plantation owners and imperialists who •
arrived on its shores in the 19th century.
Vowell recently took some time out of her
busy schedule to discuss her work with
Street Roots Sister paper, Real Change in
Seattle.
Robert Alford: What is the historical
significance of the glop of macaroni salad on a
Hawaiian plate lunch?
S arah Vowell: On a Hawaiian plate
lunch, which is a traditional mixed plate that
is served throughout the Hawaiian Islands,
there is always a scoop of macaroni salad
along with two scoops of Japanese style rice
and then some sort of Asian or Polynesian
fish or meat. The macaroni salad is this
little American anomaly amidst that Pacific
smorgasbord and the whole lunch hints at
the multiethnic saga that is the history of
Hawaii, starting with thé arrival of the New
England missionaries in 1820 and going up
through the 19th century when the
missionaries and their offspring founded the
sugar plantations that became the
foundation of the'Hawaiian economy for
about a century. And for those plantations
to run, those New Englanders and their
descendants had to import labor from all
over the world — Japan, China, the
Philippines and Korea — but also Portugal,
and to a lesser extent Norway. My book is
mostly about those people: the Haole, the
Caucasians, the Americans who showed up
and changed the islands. And so a glop of
macaroni salad is not just a glop of macaroni
salad: It’s indicative of centuries of change.
P H O T O BY
R. A.: How do the words “aloha” and
“haole” represent the differences between
Hawaiian and Western cultures?
S. V.: “Aloha” is to my mind the most
Hawaiian Word, and on the mainland we Just
hear that it means “hello” and “goodbye,”
which is true and it also basically means
“love.” But, literally translated, it has to do
with the word “breath.” It can mean “the
breath of life,” and the reason it’s said as a
greeting is that the traditional Polynesian
greeting is when two people touch noses
and then literally breathe each other in.
Now the word “haole” — which also
contains that word “ha,” Hie word for
breath — there’s a sort of old wives’ tale or
myth that the word “haole” connotes
“without breath,” because the first
Westerners who came to the islands, they
did not greet one another in traditional
Hawaiian. So, it’s supposed to be symbolic
of how alienated the white people are from
the breath of life. But really, it’s an old
word and it can mean anything non-native
including plants or animals. The story that I
tell in the book is basically about the
coming of the white people in general and
the New Englanders in particular. These
people changed the islands, and a lot of
native Hawaiians think for the worse.
Besides their ideas about Christianity,
capitalism and private land ownership, they
also brought with them their diseases,
which had a devastating effect on the native
population, just as it did in the Americas. So
the coming of the whites to Hawaii is a
pretty complicated story and there’s some
resentment toward those people on the part
of native Hawaiians, which I find
understandable.
Generally though, Hawaii is a pretty easy
going, accepting place, and because of its
multiethnic heritage, it is wildly integrated,
especially compared to the rest of the
country. It’s rare to find someone who was
bom in Hawaii who is just one race. Even
the people who identify as native Hawaiian
might have Chinese grandparents and
American grandparents. But the origins of
that are kind of nefarious. The reason that
so many different kinds of people were
shipped there wasn’t because the sugar
plantation owners had this “It’s a small
world after all” mentality. Their goal was to
bring in workers from as many different
places as possible because they felt that
people who spoke different languages were
less likely to organize against the plantation
owners.
The reason that so m any different hinds of
people were shipped there wasn't because the
sugar plantation owners had this "It's a small
world after a ll" m entality. Their goal was to
bring in workers from as m any different places
as possible because they felt that people who
spoke different languages were less like ly to
organize against the plantation owners.
RA.: How did the arrival of the New
England missionaries in 1820 affect the
institutions of Hawaiian society?
S.V.: Radically. Those missionaries, they
were smart people. As New Englanders,
they were pretty democratic: Their only goal
J, was to usher as many people into heaven as
possible and they didn’t care whether those
people were commoners or chiefs. But they
recognized that because Hawaiian society
was so hierarchical, they were going to have
See ALOHA STATE, page 9