[The following are responses to "Ground Zero," Nancie Caraway's review of "Inside Out" published in the November 22, 2000, issue of the Honolulu Weekly. The review was one of three book reviews collectively titled, "Vision Quest." These responses were directed to the Honolulu Weekly.

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Dennis Kawaharada

Paul Lyons

Richard Hamasaki

H. Doug Matsuoka

[From Dennis Kawaharada]

In her review of Inside Out (Nov. 22-28, 2000), Nancie Caraway rants against Haunani-Kay Trask's statements about who is and is not Hawaiian. Why Caraway is upset is not clear. First she objects because Trask says Asian and Haole writers shouldn't claim to be, or pretend to be, Hawaiian; then she says it's common sense that anyone without Hawaiian blood is not Hawaiian. So Caraway agrees with Trask. Where's the beef? Nowhere does Trask say that non-Hawaiian writers (I am one myself) are not part of the new multiethnic literature of Hawai'i and the Pacific, as Caraway implies. Witness Trask's great review of Richard Hamasaki's From the Spider Bone Diaries in the Honolulu Advertiser (Nov. 26, 2000).

Nowhere does Trask say that non-Hawaiian writers (I am one myself) are not part of the new multiethnic literature of Hawai'i and the Pacific; all Trask says is that they shouldn't claim to be, or pretend to be, Hawaiian.

Caraway asks rhetorically, "Where is that rowdy 'insider' who dares to disagree with our homegrown Native Hawaiian elites?" Actually, there are many challengers to Trask. And lively debates and disagreements among native Hawaiians over the issues Caraway brings up (and many others) occur daily in newspapers and literary journals, on TV shows, and at public hearings and panels throughout the state. Where has Caraway been? Does she live here? (I thought one qualification of a reviewer is that she should know something about what she is reviewing.)

Having read Trask's writings, listened to her speak, and talked with her in person, I've found her to be willing and able to "co-exist" with people of good will from all ethnic groups. What upsets her are racist lies and misrepresentations and pretensions to be what one is not.

Caraway's hysterical reaction to Trask seems to come from a hurt about not being included in something Caraway wants to be included in; what that might be is not clear. After lamenting "the low contest involved in asserting one's victimhood," Caraway tries to portray herself as a victim with a reference to "literary apartheid" at the end her article. So now she would have us believe that Trask is the oppressor and Asian and Haole writers like herself are the oppressed victims of some racist literary state that Trask controls? Give us a break. The last time I checked the Asians and Haoles were still in control of the economy of Hawaii, the State Government, the Department of Education, the University, and most of the Publishing Houses and Presses (including "The Weekly").

Dennis Kawaharada <DennisK@hawaii.edu>

[From Paul Lyons]

MY REACTION:

I was appalled at the "review" of INSIDE/OUT by Nancie Caraway. The least of its problems was that it wasn't a review of the book at hand at all, or that it misrepresented the contents of the few essays it bothered to discuss. (Whatever it finally accomplished, INSIDE/OUT is not about "literary ethnic cleansing," or even as a volume much concerned with literary politics in Hawai'i; it is a space shared by authors and critics from around the Pacific, many of them haole, like myself). Rather, what upsets me about the "review"--beyond the mean-spirited attack on one of twenty essayists--is its twisted colonial logic: "Resorts to blood and belonging are surely the last resort of a bad conscience." Another haole arrogating to herself the right to adjudicate "race" and "identity" for Hawaiians. This is the line of resentful "thinking" one expects from the "Aloha For All" party, but that one hopes not to find validated in the WEEKLY.

Paul Lyons <PLyons@hawaii.edu>

Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai'i-Manoa

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[From Richard Hamasaki]

"Ground Zero"

Caraway's offensive rant, a non-review of Hereniko and Wilson's compilation of some 20 essays, is extremely insulting to many Hawaiians, non-Hawaiians, and both indigenous and non-indigenous Pacific Islanders. Caraway wrongly asserts that essays such as Haunani-Kay Trask's "Decolonizing Hawaiian Literature" are calling for "literary apartheid" and "literary ethnic cleansing." Ironically, Caraway herself is both victim and perpetrator of a colonial "literary apartheid" which denies access to the wonderful and vibrant oral traditions and literature of the Native Hawaiians, a magnificent, substantive, and growing body of work which Trask herself defines, celebrates and pledges to "decolonize."

Near the end of her rant, after exalting the famously irreverent Maori novelist Alan Duff, Caraway asks, "Where is that rowdy 'insider' who dares to disagree with our homegrown Native Hawaiian elites?" and "Where is the artist who will pay her or his Native Hawaiian characters the ultimate artistic compliment by depicting them as complex, flawed beings like all humans, rather than static icons to be held in phony awe?"

Caraway's answer to her own unlettered questions can be found in availably published Native Hawaiian orature, traditional and contemporary literature:

• Moses K. Nakuina's The Wind Gourd of La'amaomao, translated into English by Sarah Nakoa and Esther Mo'okini (1991; 1998), celebrates a noble tradition among Hawaiians concerning their admiration of intellectual aggression and debate personified in the youth Kuapaka'a who very poetically belittles certain Hawai'i island elites in order to reveal nepotism and corruption within the traditional Hawaiian government.

• S.N. Haleole's La'ieikawai, translated into English by Martha Beckwith in 1917 and recently reprinted, reveals Hawaiian characters who must use their wits, sense of virtue, spirituality, and understanding of communal loyalty in order to battle corrupt, violent, greedy and lascivious chiefs and their elite associates.

• John Dominis Holt's Waimea Summer (1976), the first novel written in English published by a writer of Hawaiian ancestry, reveals a painful and ominous dissolution of an elite Native Hawaiian, extended family and their diminished understanding of indigenous traditional beliefs and practices.

• Trask's first collection of poetry, Light in the Crevice Never Seen (1994; 1999), fearlessly challenges corruption and develops powerful personae with which she chastises and berates unprincipled politicians, slovenly bureaucrats, greedy business people, racist academics, offensive tourists, and various officials of the U.S. military whose occupation of Hawaiian lands remains a contentious issue among a growing number of Hawai'i residents, both non-indigenous and indigenous

These four books alone, and there are many more written, edited or compiled by Native Hawaiian authors, are evidence that Caraway's rhetorical questions are sophomoric at best.

Richard Hamasaki <redfleaxxx@aol.com>

[From H. Doug Matsuoka] 

Poor Vision

Nancie Caraway attacks Haunani-Kay Trask's position that the term "Hawaiian writer" must refer only to those genealogically Hawaiian by saying it's "a great [Hawaiian] nationalist Lie that non-natives and Native Hawaiians cannot co-exist," and that "The tides of history have made sure that we do, in fact, co-exist." But if Caraway is using contemporary Hawaii's ethnic "co-existence" as a model for a multi-ethnic, "New Hawaiian Pacific Literature," then her vision is irremediably cockeyed. Using her literary model, which ethnic group has the house on the hill, and which ethnic group has been dispossessed of its literary homeland and is in jail?

This is exactly what right-minded people should be trying to prevent. Unfortunately, this model all too closely resembles the current state of New Hawaiian Pacific Literature. Man, I ain't down with this shit. I'm for busting some jailbirds out of the joint, retaking the beaches and the valleys, and forcibly evicting some of the current ridge-dwellers.

Don't panic Caraway, you can keep your house. I'm using metaphor. It's a literary device.

Sincerely,

H. Doug Matsuoka <DougWords@hawaii.rr.com>

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