Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 8, 1 August 2008 — Author reveals her heart's desire in a collection of essays [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Author reveals her heart's desire in a collection of essays

By Liza Simūn Public Affairs Specialist The Heart of Being Hawaiian Watermark Publishing 246 pages, $16.95

Writers do what they do for any number of reasons: they enjoy the words, the solitude, the expression of ideas and imagery. And some, like Sally-Jo Keala-o-Ānuenue Bowman, treasure diseovering wherever writins leads them.

In her newly published The Heart of Being Hawaiian, Bowman finds that writing leads home to her Native Hawaiian

identity. With a true sojourner's spirit, she seemed to have sat at her word proeessor and let it take her

baek to interesting experienees — from her years as a Kamehameha boarder before the dawn of the Hawaiian eultural renaissanee to more reeent experienees of eultural awakening like intuiting a name for the gourd instrument she fashioned with the help of a kupuna. These diverse pieees - many already published loeally in magazines, weren't intended to hang together. But they do, thanks to Bowman's unifying theme: her quest to find a soul-satisfying answer to the question that begged her soul for so long: Iust what does it mean to be Hawaiian these days? By definitions of blood quantum and years spent removed from Hawaiian soil, Bowman deseribes the painful realization that she'd never measure up to being "pure." It wasn't until she reaehed 10th grade, that a friend gave her a Hawaiian name, whieh means "the Path of the Rainbow"; to make the name stiek, it took a few more deeades and the eomforting arms of two noted ho 'oponopono praetitioners. These are stories that

appear in her new book. For this lightskinned Kailua girl of mixed Hawaiian aneestry and journalistie skills, whieh led her to temporarily leave Hawai'i for a eareer on the U.S. eontinent, a sense of Hawaiianness eventually ehanged from an oeeasional diseomforting twinge to an everyday souree of pride. Most would agree that the issue of indigenous identity is a ponderous and politieal hot button these days; it's an issue in legal ehallenges to the eonstitutionality of Native Hawaiian government programs. Bowman's book takes a subtle poke at those behind these ehallenges who would have us mistake the proteetion of endangered indigenous identity with so-ealled "reverse raeism." The book's inseription presents Hawai'i state data on the generations of interraeial marriage that have made these islands a "statistieian's nightmare" — as she ealls them, and even rendered eoneepts of raee useless, Bowman notes. In Bowman's breezy talk-story style, the quest for indigenous identity is a springboard for her own self-

aeeeptanee. ihis is aiso a iesson about self-love with universal applieation. While she didn't intend it as sueh, it speaks volumes about the divisiveness of ealeulahle measures of raeial extraetion versus the heahh of . bolstering native ties to land, language and lines of aneestry. Using the writer's eraft of observing, deseribing and drawing eonneetions, Bowman ultimately diseovers that onee you are grounded in eultural roots, you are inmiune to getting tangled up in outsiders' definitions' of your identity. Bowman's journalism baekground enables her to add plenty faetual minutiae that ean be as delieiously entertaining as the story of the night the King of Thailand played saxophone with the Dixieeats at the bidding of then-Governor Quinn. (This is in a Washington Plaee essay that also details Queen Lili'uokalani's haleyon days in the same residenee.) But the joy of Bowman's book is less about plot and more about that theme - an intrepidly honest writer's journey inside her own heart. And a very Hawaiian one it is. I

NĀ PUKE ■ B00KS

Essays capture the author's quest to understand her indigenous identity. Photos: Courtesy of Watermark Publishing

1 Sūlly-Jo Keala-o-Ānuenue Bowman