Island World: A History of Hawai'i and the United States
Island World is a history of Hawai'i that tells the islands' story from their volcanic beginnings thirty million years ago to the present day. Mixing geology, folklore, music, cultural commentary, and history, Gary Y. Okihiro overturns the customary narrative in which the United States acts upon and dominates Hawai'i. Instead, he depicts the islands' press against the continent, stirring American and endowing its story with fresh meaning.
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"This quirky, brilliant book gives the reader the thrill of cultural history done well. Okihiro undertakes a conventional topic in a jarring way, avoiding the assumption of set boundaries of nations and human societies."—Henry Yu, author of Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America"This beautifully written book integrates the history of Hawai'i into that of the U.S. better than any other I have ever read." —Patricia Seed, author of American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches Publishers Weekly In the first volume of a projected trilogy, Okihiro, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia, largely succeeds in a radical approach to historiography as applied to Hawaii. He defies the standard linear progression and view of "humans as subjects with volition without regard for the agencies of other life-forms...." Okihiro combines human history, natural history and mythic Hawaiian folklore with interpretations of how Hawaiian cultural artifacts (such as surfboards) infiltrated American culture and vice versa. He likewise depicts the lives of Hawaiians who wound up in North America, either by choice or involuntarily. In young islanders taken to be Westernized at special schools, Okihiro sees a parallel to similar cultural cleansing (or "schooling for subservience") of Native Americans. He also narrates the slow decimation of the rich and varied Hawaiian musical tradition reduced to clichés, à la Don Ho. Thus, Okihiro places the story of Hawaii in direct and constant relation to the story of the United States. Some readers may find this eclectic mix of facts hard to follow and synthesize, but all will come away intrigued and enlightened. 57 b&w photos, 6 maps. (Sept.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
List of IllustrationsIntroduction 11 Regions of Fire 62 Oceania's Expanse 433 Pagan Priest 724 Schooling for Subservience 985 Hawaiian Diaspora 1355 Poetry in Motion 1697 Islands and Continents 206Notes 221Bibliography 269Index 291
\ From Barnes & NobleMost histories relegate Hawai'i to a peripheral role in American culture, presenting it as an isolated cluster of self-contained spaces. Gary Y. Okhiro's Island World offers a radically different view, an image of a gravitational pull that gradually draws the islands into the assimilation of statehood. Okhiro's heterodox view and his imaginative research make this chronicle a refreshing reassessment of a far-off place.\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIn the first volume of a projected trilogy, Okihiro, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia, largely succeeds in a radical approach to historiography as applied to Hawaii. He defies the standard linear progression and view of "humans as subjects with volition without regard for the agencies of other life-forms...." Okihiro combines human history, natural history and mythic Hawaiian folklore with interpretations of how Hawaiian cultural artifacts (such as surfboards) infiltrated American culture and vice versa. He likewise depicts the lives of Hawaiians who wound up in North America, either by choice or involuntarily. In young islanders taken to be Westernized at special schools, Okihiro sees a parallel to similar cultural cleansing (or "schooling for subservience") of Native Americans. He also narrates the slow decimation of the rich and varied Hawaiian musical tradition reduced to clichés, à la Don Ho. Thus, Okihiro places the story of Hawaii in direct and constant relation to the story of the United States. Some readers may find this eclectic mix of facts hard to follow and synthesize, but all will come away intrigued and enlightened. 57 b&w photos, 6 maps. (Sept.)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \
