Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 31, Number 8, 1 August 2014 — The ins and outs of paradise [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The ins and outs of paradise

By Lurline Wailana McGregor

Hawaiians love to tell stories. This is not surprising eonsidering perpetuation of the eulture is based not just on mo'olelo, but in the kaona, or hidden meaning, of the story being told. There are mo'olelo that have been passed down sinee the beginning of time and there are new mo'olelo being made every day. Initially an oral tradition, mo'olelo heeame a written practice as well when Hawaiians learned to read and write and heeame one of the most literate people on earth. Today mo'olelo is perpetuated through hula, song, oli and written stories, fiction

and nonfiction. The Hawaiian community has always held ha'i mo'olelo, storytellers, in high regard as they are recognized as the keepers and perpetuators of culture. Kristiana Kahakauwila epitomizes the spirit of ha'i mo'olelo in her book of fictional short stories, This is Paradise, whieh captures the deeper and more complex experience of being Native Hawaiian in a contemporary world. Raised in Long Beach, Califomia, Kahakauwila traveled regularly with her family to her father's home in Maui as she was growing up, staying with her grandma or aunties. "I was there for every holiday and every summer," she recalls. "That changed as I got into high school, but for the first decade, I was there all the time. After I finished college, it was more and more important to be home and know my family on my own terms." She finally moved to Honolulu after she received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan in 2008. Kahakauwila was teaching at Chaminade University when her grandma passed. "It was as though something was unlocked, and I had a whole new eonneehon with my family. The floodgates opened and the stories eame quickly." Kahakauwila drafted five of the six stories in Tliis is Paradise during this time. The first of these stories, "Thirty-Nine Rules for Making a Hawaiian Funeral into a Drinking Game," was directly inspired by her grandmother's funeral. Three years later, Random House bought her completed manuscript. The six stories in the book cover a full spectrum of contemporary experiences that all feel familiar, from the surfer girls who hog the lineup and openly express their disdain for tourists, to the girl who raises fighting cocks, to the son of a paniolo who watches his father

as he is dying. The characters, their pidgin English, the places they go and their complicated lives are all authentic, making the stories not only believable but real, an achievement not often realized by anyone who is not intimately familiar with the culture. "I have empathy for the characters, but it doesn't mean I'mthem," Kahakauwila said in a phone interview from France, where she's doing a writer's residency and working on her second book. "I resonate with them, like with the career women who struggled with leaving home and then trying to fit in after returning, or the surfer girls who turned up their noses at me because I was in their way. I did a lot of research, reading and talking to people. After peeling off the layers of race, culture and class, what remains is the commonality of the human experience that we all share, whether it's a dying parent, the murder of a tourist or the sacrifice of love." Kahakauwila's stories resonate as easily with a loeal reader as with someone not familiar with Hawaiian or loeal culture, whieh explains why a nahonal publishing house could see the appeal to a wide audience. Tlus is Paradise was chosen as a Barnes and Nohle Summer 2013 selection of the Discover Great New Writers program and for the Target Emerging Author program. Kahakauwila is currently working on her first novel about another familiar topic - a hehonal tarogrowing family on Maui that becomes involved in a water rights issue. Through ha'i mo'olelo, as through other practices and traditions, values eontinue to be taught and the Hawaiian culture lives on. ■ Lwiine Waūana McGregor is a writer, filmmaker and author ofBetween the Deep Blue Sea and Me.

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This is Paradise By Kristiana Kahakauwila 240 pages. Hogarth. $16, also available on Kinelle.

Kristiana Kahakauwila on a visit to O'ahu in April. - Photo: Lurline McGregor