Photo Gallery/ References to My Memoir

Dear Readers,

If you have read my book The Lava Never Sleeps: A Honolulu Memoir, you may find these photos provide visual references to the narrative.

While my father’s Chinatown store closed in the 1970s, the building remains and is now occupied by the very popular restaurant The Pig & the Lady and The Pacific Gateway Center. Hint: Reservations are highly recommended.

We had a most delicious lunch there! Even though the interior and entry have been completely remodeled, the original brick walls remain. I couldn’t help feeling nostalgia for all the times I had spent between those walls. See p. 29 for a description of Yuen Chong Co.

My dear friend Liz Aulsebrook joined me and Carol for lunch there. I’ve known Liz since the 1980s and she was one of my beta readers when I finished the very first draft of the memoir.

She recently retired, so we celebrated my book and her retirement!!

Dream cake! I described this lovely cake on p. 22. This is the cake display at Liliha Bakery at Macy’s in the Ala Moana Center. I really wanted a piece, but they only sell whole cakes.

The original bakery is located near my childhood neighborhood. This new location at the shopping center recently opened, a happy surprise!

My alma mater St. Andrew’s Priory in Honolulu continues its educational mission as established by Queen Emma. I am pleased that the school continues under strong leadership that ensures a curriculum that includes Hawaiian culture and prepares its girls for all career options. I refer to Priory on pages 66 and 161.

 

Class of 1967! Here is my graduation photo with my parents.

I describe the ancient voyaging canoes that brought the first people to Hawai’i; see p. 164. Reproduced in recent times to travel throughout the Pacific, this is a model on display at the Bishop Museum. The museum also displays an ancient paddle which indicate the ancestors of the Polynesians were from SE Asia; see p. 156.

Another dear friend, Lilette Subedi reviewed my manuscript to ensure my cultural references were appropriate. She also provided the ancient canoe chant and translation on p. 167. I have recited this chant at most of my readings to invoke the culture, reinforce the journey implied in my story, and emphasize the value of community.

At my Honolulu reading at Na Mea Hawai’i/ Native Books, she chanted a beautiful oli to welcome everyone and added a naughty Chinese ditty that I had never heard.

Finally, my travel buddy on my September trip to Maui and Honolulu was Carol Cummins, a long-time friend who was one of the original members of the Seattle women’s group I joined in 1988 (p. 110). This was her first trip to the islands, and she met my friends, classmates, and family, who welcomed her with genuine aloha spirit. I was happy to share an insider’s view of my beloved islands with her.

What a memorable trip for both of us!

 

Apartheid, Racism, & Mixed Race People

Comedian Trevor Noah is a very funny guy. But he can be very serious too. His memoir Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood helped me understand apartheid, which he calls “apart-hate” for good reasons. 

According to Noah, “Apartheid was perfect racism.”

He describes the horrors of this system:

In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.

In other words, American racist policies contributed to the suffering and oppression of black South Africans in the twentieth century. This is a legacy of shame for all involved.

Noah was born in 1984, ironically in an Orwellian police state that was South Africa. His status was complicated because he was mixed race. This wasn’t supposed to happen with anti-miscegenation laws in place. As the offspring of an African mother and European father, Noah came into the world as evidence that a crime had been committed. He writes, “…[O]ne of the worst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person of another race.”

While his stories are hard-hitting, they’re also heart-warming. He deploys his humor strategically. Despite his struggles and hardships, I felt uplifted in recognizing that his story is actually about how the love of his fearless mother contributed to his survival and success.

*

In a racist U.S., mixed race people also face challenges. Not so much in Hawai’i although other racial issues persist.

Anti-miscegenation laws were designed to prevent different races, primarily Blacks and Whites in the U.S., from fraternizing socially and producing mixed-race children. Black people were not supposed to be equal to Whites; they weren’t supposed to be as human as Whites, so these laws were another attempt to dehumanize them, to mark them as “other.” In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled these laws were unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia. 

Hawai’i was one of nine states that never enacted such laws. In any case, they could not have been enforced, especially between military personnel and the local population when hordes of white men arrived in the islands in the late 1930s in advance of a likely war with Japan.

James Jones’s novel From Here to Eternity features these relationships. While his depiction of local characters are flat and caricatures more than realistic, I believe he accurately describes the predictable racial tensions. 

Another view of these racial tensions is recorded in Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History. In this book, John P. Rosa, professor of history at the University of Hawai’i, reveals the tragic consequences of racial conflict and the resulting racial injustice when military personnel accused several local boys of murder in the early 1930s, subsequently killing one of the boys. 

According to Rosa, these events galvanized the different ethnic groups into what has become Hawai’i’s local culture. Hordes of white servicemen, a transient population, arrived from the mainland where segregation laws and racist attitudes toward nonwhites were in place. How the military conducted itself in this case was a precursor to events during World War II when martial law was imposed in Hawai’i. I believe a case can be made that such military control was racially motivated.

An undercurrent of tension in varying degrees between locals and White people continues today. Male White privilege that justified colonization of the islands and eventual removal of its queen in order control the government to promote business interests, as well as the above incidents, provide the context for such tensions. 

Hawai’i and Racial Diversity

NY Times journalist Moises Velasquez-Manoff wrote a thoughtful article about race in Hawai’i, specifically about mixed-race people.  Regardless of the headline “Want to Be Less Racist? Move to Hawaii” (New York Times, June 28, 2019), Velasquez-Manoff does not paint Hawai’i as any utopia free of racial bias nor suggests that anyone should move there.

This discussion of mixed race people and multiracial identities is especially timely and instructive. He reminds readers that race is a “social construct,” a fabrication by humans, not nature, for the purpose of categorization, which then determines behavior between groups. Racism establishes hierarchy to promote economic and political self-interest, advantage, and power. These are important concepts to keep in mind as Americans battles over diversity vs homogeneity. 

Hawai’i is a reminder about the value of diversity. And its people reflect this. In the islands, people are likely to refer to President Barack Obama as mixed race instead of African American. This acknowledges his dual heritage and genetics in both White and Black cultures. In contrast, most Americans want to categorize people as if a single label can define the whole person.

In my memoir, I face this American mindset and struggle with how to define myself. Chinese or American or Hawaiian? These are the cultures that impacted and defined me. I felt pressed to choose one of these labels to conform to American ideals and reject the others.

Consequently, mixed race people present a conundrum in American society. The blurring of recognizable physical markers in many mixed race people seriously subverts racist attitudes. However, questions like “What are you?” and “Where are you from?” are often tainted since White people don’t generally ask such questions of each other. 

While the aloha spirit contributes to an ethos of racial harmony in the islands, equally important is the Hawaiian value of aloha ‘āina, or love of the land. People and land, including natural resources, are connected. If people take care of the land, the land will take care of them. This belief in mutual reciprocity is both simple and profound. Resources may seem unlimited, but they aren’t, especially in island communities.

This is where Hawaiian and local island cultural values diverge from White cultural values—American capitalism that privileges White males and justified colonialism. By no means are Hawai’i’s local communities devoid of conflict; wherever humans cohabitate, there will be conflict. However, island people may be more conscious about the need for conflict resolution. There are incentives, or a “geographic motivation” since islands are generally small.

Velasquez-Manoff has done his research to begin an important conversation. Hawai’i  is special to many people. Their racial diversity and acceptance of mixed race people offer additional reasons for why this is so.

Reader responses to this article can be found at this link: Opinion | Is Hawaii’s Racial Harmony a Myth?

Being an Author

Being an author requires marketing and promoting your book. It’s another side of myself I am getting to know. I am still not completely comfortable with this New Self, who’s always focused on her book, but so far she is behaving herself and not being totally obnoxious!

It feels like the cells of my body are rearranging themselves to accommodate this New Self. My old self did not feel comfortable in the spotlight, but would gladly support others to take the center of attention.

At AWP in March, I was handing out my publicity postcards to people I’d just met at the Portland Convention Center, leaving them on information tables, and so on. I had to make self-promotion part of my daily life.

Portland Reading

I first went public as an author of The Lava Never Sleeps: A Honolulu Memoir at Passages Bookshop in Portland to a SRO crowd in late March. The reading featured several Willow Books authors at an off-site event during the conference.

Having printed lots of postcards to help promote my memoir, I unabashedly distributed them. The book cover is visually attractive and I hoped it would get people’s attention and generate interest in the book.

I was nervous about Seattle book launch scheduled for Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park on May 2. Since May is Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I wanted to connect my book to this national cultural observation. It seemed to make sense even though API Heritage Month is not hugely recognized.

I wasn’t sure who would actually show up although I was talking to people in all my various communities. And, yes, handing out postcards.

I planned and rehearsed my reading.

I made arrangements to serve island-style snacks like taro chips, mocha crunch, coconut candy, and butter mochi cake. Hawai’i people love their snacks! My friends helped me with the shopping and displaying/arranging the snacks for the reading with table cloths, ti leaves, plumeria blossoms.

As more and more people arrived, additional chairs had to be added to the original 40 already set up.

It felt overwhelming: So many people wanted to support me and my book. Longtime friends, my mahjongg sisters, colleagues at North Seattle College, people in my tai chi group, my neighbors in the apartment building where I live, and of course my writing friends.

Writing friends in Santa Barbara and Atlanta sent a bouquet of flowers. My Seattle friends surprised me with several lei, which touched me very much. 

Very humbled and grateful for the SRO crowd standing in the aisles between bookshelves, I began the reading with an ancient canoe chant. I felt the aloha in the room during my reading and later as I signed books.

A friend came over from Pt. Townsend. Other

Showing the book cover and a ti leaf. My mother used many of these to make the ti-leaf skirt shown on the cover.

friends came from the Eastside whom I had not seen in decades. It was a wonderful evening of surprises! I could not have wished for a better book launch and celebration for my book.

A definite celebration because people understand how dang hard it is to get published by any traditional press. It can take years, which it did for me.

Here’s the thing. There are no guarantees when you’re a writer. You can only keep writing, keep learning your craft, keep submitting, ride the emotional roller-coaster, and just keep going. Persevere is the mantra if a writer wants to become an author. Or as they say in Hawaiian: Kulia!

 

 

2019: Year of the Book

 

Mark your calendars!

March 1, 2019: Publication date for my memoir

Mid-February 2019: The public can pre-order copies from bookstores

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I have had moments when I seriously doubted that The Lava Never Sleeps: A Honolulu Memoir would ever be published. But persistence (or stubbornness) paid off.

It’s been a strange time. Between signing the book contract and the present, I have felt in limbo. I’ve been developing new writing, gathering information on marketing and promoting the book, sinking back into the manuscript during the editing process, and basically feeling like someone with multiple personalities.

Receiving the final artwork for the book cover helped to ground me. This was something physical, an important milestone in producing the book. I began to feel this is real, this is happening!

TA-DA! Here it is:

 

In a bookstore, a well-designed book cover can determine whether a reader picks up a book or not. I love this cover and hope readers will too! MAHALO to the graphic artist at Aquarius Press for a terrific job.

Note: My mother made my ti leaf skirts for hula performances, as all mothers did in the 1950s. We had several ti plants in our yard, and I remember watching her cut the leaves with stalks long enough to bend. She used string to weave the stalks together. When it was done, she shredded the leaves into strands. I don’t remember if I was nervous about performing on a stage or any of the dances, but I remember the swish of these green skirts.

 

Hawaii 5-0

As much as I am a fan of the television series, this “Hawaii 5-0” trip was something else. I just returned from my 50th class reunion: St. Andrew’s Priory Class of 1967. Our class is the school’s Centennial Class so this reunion coincided with the 150th anniversary of the school’s founding by Queen Emma.

Plaque at the school

Many of us were initially reluctant to commit to attending the reunion events and had had little or no contact with our classmates nor the school over the decades. A few simply had no interest or desire to meet. St. Andrew’s Priory had its flaws and deficits, for sure, and I cannot know what hardships and difficulties might have been experienced by others.  While I excelled in various areas, PE was surely not one of them.

From a graduating class of 60 girls, 18 of us gathered in Honolulu from various geographical points to remember our years at the Priory, reflect on our youth, and mostly to celebrate the women we have become and the lives we are living.

We’ve all learned that life does not move in a straight line, but twists and turns often beyond our control. The bright-faced girl I was who graduated in 1967 thought she was so ready for life, so ready to step out into and meet the larger world. My high school graduation seemed to offer such freedom and promise. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Likewise, I went to my reunion without a clear idea of what might happen, whether I would feel awkward or have a really good time. Fifty years is a lifetime, and I didn’t know if I would have anything in common with the girls I once knew. As we reconnected over Facebook, the memories began to bubble up, and I realized that these girls had been important in my school years.

I am delighted that I went. The girls we once were have been replaced with strong women who have been tested by life. I heard some of the stories, but not all of them. What I know is that we are no longer innocents. We have learned depth and honesty, humor and wisdom. We have grown beyond our limited selves. It was a pleasure to meet the women of the Class of 1967! And I am honored to be one of them.

I discovered I have a deep bond and kinship with my classmates that I didn’t know existed. Although I hadn’t socialized much with some of them during my Priory years, our shared memories of the school, our teachers, the Sisters of Transfiguration who ran the school created an indelible bond that surfaced during our time together. Who remembers the names of the five Sisters? Our Latin class teachers? That lunch used to cost 25 cents? (Really? Wasn’t 50 cents?) That we would gather under the ylang ylang tree at the start of PE class? Or Mrs. Hirao’s shortbread cookies?

Graduation 1967 with my parents

Of course, we each remembered different things, but we also had some common memories that were fun to recall.

I confessed I still had occasional nightmares about failing to bring my PE clothes (ironed blue shorts and white blouse) on PE day.  I don’t even remember what the punishment was, but I felt the fear deep in my bones at such an infraction.

When we toured the school, we saw the many improvements of the campus (a new gym! a music program!) and heard about the exciting new curriculum designed to foster leadership and individual direction in the girls’ future careers. Other changes include the uniforms, a boy’s school for grades 1-5, and attending chapel at St. Andrew’s Cathedral only once a week instead of every day of school during our years.

It’s an exciting time for the Priory. New leadership by Head of School Dr. Ruth R. Fletcher is bringing fresh energy into our historic school. This small private girls’ school is graduating even smaller classes than our 60 seniors in 1967, but this is intentional in order to provide each girl with the attention she needs to discover her potential and talents in an ever-changing and challenging world.

And yet, some traditions continue. My classmates and I were deeply touched during the Coral Cross Ceremony on Ascension Day, which celebrates the school’s founding. The junior class decorates the cross each year to honor the school and the senior class. The plain coral cross is transformed overnight by the students who sleep at the school to ensure this is completed by the next morning. Each year, the design is different and anticipation is keen to view the artistry. The juniors sing their class song to the seniors, then the seniors reciprocate. With full hearts and through tears.

It’s a beautiful tradition, which brought back memories of our junior class decorating the cross in yellow and white carnations and singing our class song. On special days like this, we wore our white pleated skirts instead of our navy or black ones. I had almost forgotten this detail until one of classmates gave us copies of our class photo of Ascension Day 1966 when we were juniors.

I had not returned to the school since I graduated. This class reunion gave me a reason to reconnect to my alma mater, my classmates, and the knowledge that, whether we know it or not, we share an important bond to Hawaii and Hawaiian history. One hundred fifty years ago, Queen Emma was inspired to start a school to educate girls. This was a radical idea. We alumnae embody a queen’s vision.

“What school you went?”

This question always comes up when Hawai’i’s local people get together. Always. It’s short-hand or code to understanding the individual. It’s more important than their neighborhood since someone going to a private school can live anywhere.

My sisters and I went to St. Andrew’s Priory in downtown Honolulu. My brothers went to St. Louis High School and ‘Iolani. My father wanted us to go to college-prep schools. And I think he didn’t want us picking up Pidgin, spoken commonly among public school students, and perhaps he feared other bad influences. We all would have gone to McKinley, which both my parents attended, if my father could not have afforded to send us to private schools.

Because we live in an island community, local people know the different schools and some of the more extreme reputations of some schools. If they’re into football, they can recall the rivalries, the big football games of their generation, and memorable athletes. If someone answers: “Wai-‘anae,” the inquirer might step back, but not before a respectful “Ooooh!” escapes. You had to be tough to grow up in Wai-‘anae and survive. No one messes with kids from there, not if you value your life. They may not have the material comfort of those in other parts of the island, but they live close to the land and the ocean.

Many native Hawaiians live in this coastal community in the shadow of Mt. Ka‘ala and the Wai-‘anae Mountain Range. And in fact, Wai-‘anae Valley was once known as the area’s poi bowl. It produced enough taro, or kalo, to feed those living along this leeward coast. Today, Ka‘ala Farm and Cultural Learning Center has restored ancient terraces to once again grow taro and to reinforce Hawaiian cultural values.

Knowing someone’s school might connect two people to a mutual acquaintance. It roughly identifies socioeconomic background, whether someone is “country” or “townie.” Public high schools in town are McKinley, Ka-imu-kī, Roosevelt, Farrington, University, and Ka-lani. Of these, Farrington had a bad rep; in my day, I heard about lots of fighting among both guys and girls. Its student population was very diverse–kids living in Ka-lihi, a poor to middle-class neighborhood, where new immigrants could find cheap housing. It had a good football team powered by huge Samoan guys.

In contrast, Ka-lani High School was located in the Wai-‘alae-Kāhala area, inland from Diamond Head, where many middle- to upper-class families lived, an enclave for white people, but not exclusively.

Private high schools attracted students from both middle-class and upper-class families. Many Catholic schools, Mid-Pacific Institute, Puna-hou, Ka-mehameha, Priory, and ‘Iolani are some of them.

Of these, the most expensive, most prestigious (to some), and perhaps most academically rigorous is Puna-hou, which was founded by the missionaries for their own children. This elite status continues today although children from various ethnic groups now are admitted.  A boy named Barak Obama graduated from this school.

I think the Priory had a good reputation. It was founded in 1867 as a private boarding school for Hawaiian girls under the auspices of the Anglican Church and founded by Queen Emma, wife of King Ka-mehameha IV. I remember wandering down a long hall where the photos of each graduating class were hung. It was like walking through history; I noticed the changes in the uniforms, hairstyles, and ethnic backgrounds of the girls.

Queen Emma

Priory’s Centennial Class graduated in 1967, which was my class. Our 5oth class reunion is scheduled for Spring 2017. I was stunned to realize that nearly fifty years have flown by since we graduated! How is this possible?? Some of us have reconnected through the reunion Facebook site. I don’t have my yearbook, but some of my classmates still do, and one classmate posted digital pages. Seeing these pages and communicating via Facebook have stirred my memories of these years.

At first I wasn’t sure I would attend this reunion; I haven’t been in touch with anyone nor have I visited the school since graduation. All of us have changed. But these were important developmental years of learning and growing together. As a writer, I know how memories can be both enriching and unreliable. And yet, sometimes this is all we have to hold on to something in the past. By connecting again to my classmates, I can piece together and revisit these almost forgotten days of long-ago. Some of my classmates and I go back to elementary school. I’m looking forward to seeing my classmates again and sharing our stories!