My book builds on the foundation laid by my five recommended books (as well as several others). Anuta is a remote Polynesian community in the Solomon Islands. It is one of the few remaining islands where voyaging canoes are still constructed regularly, constitute a part of everyday life, and where inter-island travel in such canoes never ceased. I was first there for a year in 1972–73 and was introduced to Anutan maritime practice. During that visit, I took part in a four-day voyage to Patutaka, an uninhabited island thirty miles away.
This book was also published under the title Vikings of the Pacific and was written by New Zealand Māori scholar Sir Peter Buck (also known by his Māori name, Te Rangi Hīroa). It was a pioneering work explaining, from an Indigenous perspective, the process through which the islands of Polynesia came to be settled over thousands of years by voyagers traveling in outrigger or double-hulled canoes without navigational instruments.
As an anthropologist whose research has focused on Polynesia and who has always been interested in maritime issues, I was intrigued by the questions this book raised and motivated to explore them during my own ethnographic fieldwork.
Pp. xiii, 335; frontispiece plate of the author, 57 black-and-white photo-plates, 4 maps. Publisher’s original wine-red cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine and front cover, front cover with gilt boat, endpaper maps, 8vo. The author served as director of the Bernice B. Bishop Museum in Hawaii. The volume discusses the peopling of the islands of the Pacific Ocean in detail. No ownership marks.
I was drawn to this book because, like me, the author was born and raised
in Hawaii. I’m not a big reader of short story collections, but this one pulled
me in from story one.
The book contains some of the most finely crafted lines
I’ve read in years. For example: “Sadie watches the spring of muscles flex and yield under her
step-uncles’ undershirts as they plunge their shovels into dirt. She watches
the burial of the carcass, then, eight hours later, its resurrection.”
After reading this line early in the first story, I started taking notes,
which I rarely do. I wasn’t disappointed. The collection is filled with gems
like these. This is Kakimoto’s first book. It’s the start of what might become
a brilliant literary career.
A HAUNTING COLLECTION OF STORIES THAT WEAVES HAWAIIAN MYTHOLOGY WITH A RICH SENSE OF PLACE
This wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonisation. This is a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth.
A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with…
I taught traditional Hawaiian literature to college students and established Kalamakū Press in 1990 to publish Hawaiian folktales, narratives, autobiography, and poetry. I also worked for a decade as a writer for the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), a scientific and cultural non-profit that builds and sails double-hulled voyaging canoes to explore how the Polynesians, without modern navigation instruments, found and settled Hawai‘i. Long before Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i, Polynesians discovered and lived sustainably for centuries on an isolated chain of eight islands. The practices and values of the traditional culture have a lot to teach communities struggling to find their way in an overdeveloped, overpopulated world today.
Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau (1815–1876) was one of the most important and prolific Hawaiian scholars of the nineteenth century. His history of the ruling chiefs of Hawai‘i begins with the high chief ʻUmi, eight generations before Kamehameha I, who established the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1795, and continues to the death of Kamehameha III in 1854. Ruling Chiefs, published in 1961, was translated from Hawaiian newspaper articles that appeared in the 1860s and 1870s. The stories include Captain James Cook’s arrival in 1776, the coming of Western missionaries, and the changes that followed. All of the writings of Kamakau are highly recommended, including The People of Old, The Works of the People of Old, and The Tales and Traditions of the People of Old.
Eighteenth-century Hawaiian historian Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau traces Hawaiʻi’s history from ʻUmi, high chief eight generations before Kamehameha I, to the death of Kamehameha III in 1854. This volume covers the arrival of Captain James Cook, the consolidation of the Hawaiian kingdom by Kamehameha I, the coming of the missionaries, and the changes affecting the kingdom through the reign of Kamehameha III.
This history was originally written by Kamakau in Hawaiian as a series of newspaper articles in the 1860s and 1870s. The English translation was completed by a team of esteemed Hawaiian scholars including Mary Kawena Pukui, Thomas G. Thrum,…
I’ve been in love with business books since I was a child and I’m also a big fan of great story telling. I didn’t realize until recently that you can have both in one book! Discovering this genre of business books that inspire and delight while passing along new and useful insights was a wonderful surprise for me that I like to share with others. These gripping stories have opened up a whole new world for me and allowed me to learn and apply their lessons much more quickly. It’s simply more fun and easier to remember new wisdom when it’s carried forward in gripping stories.
We meet the protagonist Kai and her daughter Michaela as they navigate some of life’s most difficult moments. They are grieving and lost as Kai struggles to navigate her new life and the dauting prospecting of supporting Michaela all on her own.
Luckily they meet Belle, a wildly successful businesswoman who takes them under her wing as she mentors Kai. Throughout the story, Belle teaches 7 rules that will ensure success for any of us in life and in business.
The book is so compelling that you won’t realize you are learning business principles until you reach the ending with satisfaction and realize that you are smarter and better prepared for having read it. This is another book I simply couldn’t put down!
Kai Frazier is a mother raising her ten year-old daughter, Michaela... alone. Happily married for over ten years, never dreaming she would have to build a new life for the two of them – she now faces difficult and unwanted decisions.
On a beach in Hawaii, she encounters Belle, the lady with the blue hair – a most unusual woman. A friendship develops between the two and Kai’s new mentor guides her as she embarks on her journey into the future.
The characters are lovable, realistic and entertaining. The fiction is at times poignant... at times humorous... and always engaging.…
My passion to write about Hawaiʻi began with a desire to see the world that I knew and loved reflected in literary form, complete with all its complexities and nuance. Growing up alongside Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty movement, there was so much I didn’t understand. School textbooks didn’t mention Hawaiʻi. The little I learned about our culture and history was from dancing hula. So when I started reading some of the books on this list, it put all of my memories into context. Everything about my home became clearer to see (and therefore write about). The true beauty of Hawaiʻi exists behind its postcard image, and this is how you get there!
I promise not all my book picks are political! But this incredible book is a must-read, and as it explains, culture is political, politics are cultural.
There is no way to fully appreciate Hawaiian culture as it is today without being aware of what it took to keep it alive.
In this compilation, personal stories of activists and academics come together to offer a searing depiction of the cost of colonization and the ultimate love of their land that continues to fuel its resistance.
From water wars and land grabs to the touching story of how the Hawaiian language was brought back to life, A Nation Rising will broaden your understanding and appreciation for Hawaiʻi’s landmarks and tourist destinations.
A Nation Rising chronicles the political struggles and grassroots initiatives collectively known as the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Scholars, community organizers, journalists, and filmmakers contribute essays that explore Native Hawaiian resistance and resurgence from the 1970s to the early 2010s. Photographs and vignettes about particular activists further bring Hawaiian social movements to life. The stories and analyses of efforts to protect land and natural resources, resist community dispossession, and advance claims for sovereignty and self-determination reveal the diverse objectives and strategies, as well as the inevitable tensions, of the broad-tent sovereignty movement. The collection explores the Hawaiian political ethic of ea,…
I’m a scholar of environmental history with a focus on human-animal relationships. I’ve also studied the histories of slavery and the African Diaspora, and in my book I’ve fused approaches from these two fields to look at how human-animal relations and networks shaped the expansion of slavery and slave trading from West Africa to the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. My scholarship is also an outgrowth of my teaching, and I regularly teach American environmental and cultural history at California State University, Northridge. I finished my PhD in history at Rutgers University, and my research has recently been funded by the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William & Mary.
Cows are not typically centered in histories of imperialism and colonialism, but John Ryan Fischer presents the case that bovines transformed the societies of California Indians and native Hawaiians in the nineteenth century.
This book helped me think about how to connect histories of livestock and land seizures, and helps us think about animals as malleable creatures of empire that are repurposed by Indigenous nations.
In the nineteenth century, the colonial territories of California and Hawai'i underwent important cultural, economic, and ecological transformations influenced by an unlikely factor: cows. The creation of native cattle cultures, represented by the Indian vaquero and the Hawaiian paniolo, demonstrates that California Indians and native Hawaiians adapted in ways that allowed them to harvest the opportunities for wealth that these unfamiliar biological resources presented. But the imposition of new property laws limited these indigenous responses, and Pacific cattle frontiers ultimately became the driving force behind Euro-American political and commercial domination, under which native residents lost land and sovereignty and faced…
My passion to write about Hawaiʻi began with a desire to see the world that I knew and loved reflected in literary form, complete with all its complexities and nuance. Growing up alongside Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty movement, there was so much I didn’t understand. School textbooks didn’t mention Hawaiʻi. The little I learned about our culture and history was from dancing hula. So when I started reading some of the books on this list, it put all of my memories into context. Everything about my home became clearer to see (and therefore write about). The true beauty of Hawaiʻi exists behind its postcard image, and this is how you get there!
Jessica Machado’s father is Hawaiian and her mother is from the American South, a factor that looms large in a place like Hawaiʻi.
As a child, Machado senses that her life is complicated by history and context, but doesn’t have the words to formulate the questions brewing within.
In this touching coming-of-age memoir, Machado grapples with some of the same haunting questions and uncertainties that inspired my writing of my book while taking us on a journey to discover if her unshakeable connection to Hawaiʻi is a blessing, a burden, or a responsibility she’s lucky to have.
A must-read for anyone who has ever left home wondering how to take it with them.
A powerful, lush memoir about a Hawaiian woman who ran away from paradise to discover who she is and where she belongs.
Born and raised in Hawai'i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be "local." Feeling separate from the history and tenets of Hawaiian culture that have been buried under the continental imports of malls and MTV, Jessica often sees her homeland reflected back to her from the tourist perspective-as an uncomplicated paradise. Her existence, however, feels far from that ideal.…
I live in California and write novels based on my grandmother’s stories of our female ancestors. I love tales of everyday women who lived normal lives (according to them) but were quite remarkable to my 21st-century eyes. I wrote The Aloha Spirit about my husband’s grandmother, who was an amazing woman. His family is from Hawaii, and we visit there frequently. Anyone who spends time in the islands experiences the warm welcome of the people, which we know as the aloha spirit. I know Grandma had a difficult life, and I wrote the novel to explore how she might have overcome those difficulties to find her aloha spirit.
Laura’s fiancé and father die, and she travels from San Francisco to Hawaii to live with missionary relatives. It’s 1886, and Honolulu is the sophisticated bustling capital of a prosperous modern kingdom. Laura’s missionary relatives actively work to bring down the monarchy while Laura goes to work for the royal family. She builds quite a bond with the last queen, Lili`uokalani, who is trying to save her kingdom. This book tells the compelling story of the Hawaiian kingdom’s last days from a point of view inside the royal family.
BAIPA Award Winner: Best Historical Fiction. How did Hawaii become part of America? This story, inspired by true events suppressed for nearly 100 years, is the one James Michener never wrote. In 1886, Laura Jennings travels to Hawaii to live with missionary relatives. She imagines she'll live in a grass hut, ministering to savages. When she arrives in Honolulu, she's surprised to find her relatives are among the wealthy elite plotting to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy. And, far from being savages, the Hawaiians have developed a charming and prosperous Victorian kingdom. To avoid her conniving uncle's control, Laura leaves to…
I taught traditional Hawaiian literature to college students and established Kalamakū Press in 1990 to publish Hawaiian folktales, narratives, autobiography, and poetry. I also worked for a decade as a writer for the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), a scientific and cultural non-profit that builds and sails double-hulled voyaging canoes to explore how the Polynesians, without modern navigation instruments, found and settled Hawai‘i. Long before Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i, Polynesians discovered and lived sustainably for centuries on an isolated chain of eight islands. The practices and values of the traditional culture have a lot to teach communities struggling to find their way in an overdeveloped, overpopulated world today.
Hawaiian Antiquities, published in 1903, was translated into English from the nineteenth-century writings of David Malo (1795–1853). Malo was a major scholar of Old Hawai‘i who spent his life among the courts of the kings and chiefs, where he learned traditional practices and oral traditions. His writings cover a wide range of topics, including cosmogony, origins and genealogy, social classes, geography (land, sea, and sky and clouds, winds, and rains), the calendar (seasons, months, and days), flora and fauna, fishing and farming, houses and canoes, food and clothing, sports and games, religious worship and observances, healing practices and necromancy, and traditions about the ancient kings of Hawai‘i.
As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
This book explores the customs and development of the Polynesian Islands prior to interference from European powers.
I see the rawest forms of our instincts and psychology in the indigenous peoples of the world. This book is a call for all readers to suspend the tendency to judge other cultures and time periods and just be observers.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener brings Hawaii’s epic history vividly to life in a classic saga that has captivated readers since its initial publication in 1959. As the volcanic Hawaiian Islands sprout from the ocean floor, the land remains untouched for centuries—until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers make the perilous journey across the Pacific, flourishing in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions. Then, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrive, bringing with them a new creed and a new way of life. Based on exhaustive research and told in Michener’s immersive prose,…
