Homeward bound: settler Aesthetics in Hawai'i's literature.

 
  You and I are Home. Not in a house full of bed and chairs, dishes and 
  toothbrushes, but in undeniable covenant. Home is the possibility of 
  return. (Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Father of the Four Passages) 

Introduction: Where to Go From Here?

Three years have elapsed since the publication of "Whose Vision: Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawai'i," the special edition of Amerasia that brought national attention to the fact that all was not well in the Islands. That little critical attention has been directed at Hawai'i's local Asian-American canon since this issue shows how decolonization can reinforce the painful divisions between the indigenous and the nonindigenous. The primary purpose of this paper is to reexamine this divide, a dangerous proposition given that the Islands have seemingly reached the same point Franz Fanon witnessed in Africa when many "perceive that race feeling in its most exacerbated form is triumphing" (158). And so while the fight goes on for indigenous rights and for the dismantling of colonialism underlying the socioeconomic ascendancy of local Asians, the "local" remains a suspicious and troubling basis for a collective identity and literary studies.

In many ways, the settler/Native binary is emblematic of the current situation in the Pacific, where conflicts between native populations and immigrant communities have erupted in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji. Such troubles provoked the Indo-Fijian writer, Vijay Mishra, to revise his optimistic Girmit (settler) theory in light of multiple coups and how the "diaspora, often unawares (since it hankers after the totality left behind), has become a splinter in the side of the indigenous culture itself" (8). Similar reassessments are occurring in Hawai'i. Responding to the lack of distinction between indigenous and nonindigenous claims to the Hawaiian Islands, Haunani-Kay Trask argues, "For our Native people, Asian success proves to be but the latest elaboration of foreign hegemony. The history of colonization becomes a twice-told tale, first of our discovery and settlement by European and American businessmen and missionaries, then the domination of the plantation Japanese, Chinese, and eventually Filipino rise to dominance" ("Settlers," 2-3). Candace Fujikane further observes that literature focusing on the immigrant experience ignores a larger issue--that such texts are symbolic of "the erasure of a Native Hawaiian presence in settler literature [which] enacts a depopulation that renders Hawai'i an 'emptied' space open to settler claims of 'belonging'" ("Sweeping Racism," 164).

The following analysis of a poem from a local newspaper demonstrates how settler claims of belonging are seen to operate. Mark Labarre's "No talk stink" (1994) was written in response to a letter to The Honolulu Advertiser about the inappropriateness of Pidgin in the classroom and how "Hawaiian public schools will only improve when the language problem is fixed and the curriculum stops being centered on the Hawaiian sovereignty movement" (Hall, A13). Labarre's humorous response relies on a sense of local belonging by constructing a culturally/ethnically idealized "safe space":

 
  I one Punahou grad haole boy 
  Who grew up on akule an' poi; 
  Shoots, can talk fancy kine 
  But pidgin uku-pile mo' fine 
  An' no soun' so stockup an' maha 'oi. 
  See, all us kanaka o'heah 
  Know da pidgin not goin' broke you eeah, 
  So eef ouah pranunciashon 
  Stay cause you too much frushtrasion 
  Wow, laulau--das jus' youah pilikia. 
  Assammaddafo' you anyway 
  Fo' "Y-AWL" to creetasize da stuffs we say? 
  Eh, you Mainlan' buggas' talk 
  Geeves us one culchah shock; 
  You tink DAS English? Shee! and Auwe! 
 
  But when we talkin' li' dees wit' each oddah, 
  Ei nei! Ja' like seestah and braddah! 
  Ennykine--Japanee, 
  Pilipino, Portagee-- 
  Can all onnastan' one anoddah. 
  Eh! Pidgin not born een da slums, 
  An' us folks dat talk 'um ain't bums, 
  Da Crips an' Bloods in L.A. 
  Nevah talk dees kine way; 
  What, no like? Den go back wheah you come! 
  Get one word, "Ha'aheo," das "pride" 
  An' it comes from ouah hott, deep eenside, 
  We stoddy hod fo' talk nice, 
  Weelin' pay enny price, 
  An' ouah teachahs no like youah boo lies. 
  [...................................] 
  So, Jon, take som' adwise from dees blala: 
  No talk stink and call pidgin "opala"; 
  Min' you' own P's and Q's 
  You pupule babooze, 
  Or you nevah gonna join ouah 'ohana! (1) 

Flippant and irreverent, Labarre's lines conjure a secure home that shelters a family, ethnically constructed like the ideal plantation--a harmonious intermingling of the Japanese, Filipinos, Portugueses, and Haole (whites), who choose to be a part of this group. For Labarre, who continually makes reference to growing up locally, the local represents a native authority that takes its power from the speaker's inclusion among the Kanakae (a term that has traditionally signified Native Hawaiians) and his use of Hawaiian words. By implication, the affirmation of self for such a writer relies on a carefully construed nativist sense of place, a sentiment made legitimate for its refusal to adopt outsider conventions that are often heralded as symbols of an imperialist colonial West.