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This Is Paradise: Stories

por Kristiana Kahakauwila

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14334189,788 (4)15
"A visceral, poignant, and elegantly gritty work of debut fiction set in Hawaii, in the vein of Junot Diaz's Drown and Danielle Evans's Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self This is the real Hawai'i: life is not the paradisical adventure that honeymooners or movie-goers see. Danger lurks on beautiful beaches, violence bubbles under the smooth surf, and characters come face to face with the inevitability of change and the need to define who they are against the forces of tradition and expectation. In these stories, a young woman decides to take revenge on the man who had her father murdered - only to find that her father wasn't who she thought he was. Three different groups of Hawaiian women observe and comment on the progress of an American tourist through one day and one night in Honolulu. And a young couple have an encounter with a stray dog that shakes their relationship to the core. Intimately tied to the Hawaiian Islands, This is Paradise explores the relationships among native Hawaiians, local citizens, and emigrants from (and to) the contiguous forty-eight states. There is tension between locals and tourists, between locals and the military men that populate their communities, between local Hawaiian girls who never leave, and those who do so for higher education and then return. Kahakauwila is a careful observer of her protagonists' actions - and, sometimes, their inaction. Her portrayal of people whose lives have lost their centre of gravity is acute, often heartbreaking, and suffused with a deeply felt empathy.With a contemporary edginess, a mature style, and a sense of history reverberating into the present, This is Paradise is an incredible debut"--… (mais)
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Mostrando 1-5 de 35 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
Striking and memorable collection of stories that deal with identity, belonging and the complexity of life in Hawaii. ( )
  patl | Feb 29, 2024 |
The Biere Library Storytime Book Club picked this for April/May 2023, a suggestion by Thomas because one of our proposed themes was the PI part of AAPIHM (Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, though I've also seen people put the acronym as AANHPI to add Native Hawaiian as a distinct group). I'm including my Asia-Asian America tag on here because of brief intersections in "Wanle" and "The Portrait of a Good Father".

Overall, an excellent debut and short stories are such a great entry point into an author's work. Use of pidgin linguistically sets the scene and code switching between different groups. No explanatory commas here because it wouldn't make sense for characters to define words and concepts that are everyday to them!

Individual story thoughts:

"This is Paradise"- the titular story, from the perspectives of three different groups of women in Waikiki who all briefly cross paths with a white tourist from the mainland. It's she who utters, "This is Paradise" only for things to go sideways. It took me a moment to realize there were three distinct views and not say, the same women but at different parts of their lives.

"Wanle"- A daughter, seeking revenge and closure in her father's chosen hobby, cockfighting, and how that influences her relationships with her lover and her "uncles" in the hobby.

"The Road to Hāna"- A soon-to-be-engaged couple go camping and find a dog. This one muses on a question I think about a lot, identity and how do we qualify "native"- is there a length of time you need to be from somewhere? And how does that interplay with Native identity? (see also, why I haven't gotten around to watching Yellowstone yet because I'm pretty sure it grapples with the Montana rancher variation).

"Thirty-Nine Rules for Making a Hawaiian Funeral into a Drinking Game"- second person perspective, and felt very autobiographical but who knows? Felt familiar, for going to a large family gathering with all sorts of extended family that you pick up with where you left off even though it's been years.

"Portrait of a Good Father"- primarily from Sarah's perspective though we get Grace and Joon's perspectives. The women in a man's life view him through, well, his fatherhood because of and in spite of their own relationships with him.

"The Old Paniolo Way"- the reason for my queerreads tag, a man returns from San Francisco to his familial ranch (paniolo = cowboy) as his father is in hospice, being cared for by the man's sister and an attractive male nurse. Plays with some fears of not wanting to disappoint family (especially with so many hours) versus being your whole true self (and if they're really family, do they know already?) ( )
  Daumari | Dec 28, 2023 |
My reading this book stopped when the author wrote a story about cockfighting, as if it is an acceptable cruelty. I don't care if you're half Hawaiian, you're not cool. ( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
I'm starting my epic GoodReads catch-up in the middle. This lovely little short story collection was recommended by a friend at Palgrave as they were putting the ARC on the charity bookshelf (which is, alas for me but good for my apartment, no longer right next to my desk). The stories are delightfully varied, not only in character and setting, but in style as well. For that reason, I'm going to break this review, including the quotes, down by chapter.

This is Paradise

When I said I had to read this story twice to "get" it, I meant that as a compliment. It's rare for me to find a contemporary work that's actually challenging. This story is told from the collective "we", and I spent most of my first read-through trying to figure out why hotel maids were going surfing in the morning and crawling through traffic in cars after getting on a bus.

This actually delighted me. Though we can never be sure of an author's intention, the effect of my (mis)reading was a sense of close-knit community--not homogeneity, but the containment of multitudes (to riff on Whitman). The moment when the groups of women saw each other in the story shattered this understanding but left them all feeling close: different, but united in feeling.

That said, there are definitely differences in how the women are handled. I don't have the book anymore (already passed on to another reader), but I believe the hotel maids never speak (or, possibly, are even identified by name, though that's a big leap to make without a reference point). The career women are the ones I expected stories about: those touched by the biggest culture clash, on both sides of the divide between traditionally Hawaiian and modern American culture.

16) We are becoming pillars of the island community. We are growing into who we’ve always dreamt of being. But sometimes, late at night and alone beneath the hand-stitched Hawaiian quilts we can finally afford to purchase, we wish we had followed our law and grad school boyfriends to D.C. or Chicago. We could have foregone being pillars. We could have been regular women.

Said by the career women. It reminds me of everything I've read and felt about the few hard-earned success stories from underprivileged groups being asked to speak on behalf of the entire community: it's exhausting, even if it is something you wouldn't feel like you could acknowledge out loud.

22-23) “Everyone talks about aloha here, but it’s like Hawaiians are all pissed off. They live in paradise. What is there to be mad about?” We look at each other, and we feel the heat rising our faces. Our families are barely affording a life here, the land is being eaten away by developers, the old sugar companies still control water rights. Not only does paradise no longer belong to us, but we have to watch foreigners destroy it.

31) How do we admit that finding a man who is as successful and as driven and as single as we are is not an easy task?

Oh, how I sympathize.

Wanle

63) “What matters is I don’t like what the fighting does to people. Especially you.”
“What does it do to me?” My voice rose.
“It makes you something you’re not. Something hard and mean and vengeful.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what I am.”
“No.” He shook his head, his anger choking him. “You’re not. You can’t be.”
Ah, an excellent specimen of the privileged jerk! In this case, the male of the species (popularly considered to be the social superior of the female) decides that he can define his female mate rather than trying to understand her. The result is a truncated conversation that removes the possibility of mutual discovery by reinforcing a societal ideal of femininity and the exploration of the individual as an independent being. Next, on Animal Planet…

84) My uncle thinks my leaving broke him, but I know this isn’t true. The moment the Indian killed that first bird, he returned to his childhood home, his father’s child.
While I understand that the Indian’s action are quite likely to be realistic (isn’t that a scary thought?), and would not be seen as an overreaction by many, I can’t get my mind around the idea of destroying life to get back at someone for something as small as going to a cock-fighting competition. While animal rights activists would be appalled, it’s not like the fights were causing harm to Wanle or the Indian. In “real life”, this is the time for an ultimatum: this isn’t going to work, get yourself and your chickens out of my life. But committing violence to protest the commission of violence? There’s a time and a place. A chicken fight hardly seems to fit either category. Of course, that’s why this is such an engaging story.


The Road to Hana

92) “My cousin can chant back twenty-five generations. That’s what it means to be from a place. And yet, you’re from Minnesota, and I’m from Vegas. How can that be?” He wanted to say he wasn’t from Minnesota. He was from Hawai’i. Yet, that didn’t seem quite right. He was local, he knew that much. He was local and she wasn’t. But did that matter? Was local being from a place, or just of it?
A question that I face often in my life. How do you answer where you’re from when you’ve lived in so many places? The two characters in this story actually seem lucky to me, with only two places to choose from. I like the distinction between “local” and “being from”. I think in most places I’ve lived I would consider myself a local. I was only “from” somewhere when I was in another country altogether—otherwise, even right after a move, saying I was “from” a place felt a bit like a lie.

95) She always spoke of history in the present tense, which never failed to unsettle him. To him, history was not available for reintroductions and reliving but accessible only via careful and protracted study. For Becky, however, the past and present existed in the same moment. In her memory the two met, and through their meeting, she layered them, without noticeable boundary.
This part gave me chills. I love their difference of ideas about history, and I’m especially fond of Becky’s use of the present tense to describe history. That immediacy is sorely lacking from so many studies of history—maybe if the whole country felt closer to history, we would fell more urgency about changing the things that a lot of people think are already long gone—like racism and sexism, to name only a few.

I will not speak of the middle of this chapter. Suffice it to say that I’ve discovered my phobia is more expansive than just, well, what it already is. *shudder*

109) “I’m still hungry,” Becky said. “Are you? I’ll fix sandwiches.”
“No, I’m full,” he said, though he was still hungry, too. He had caught the shrimp and wanted to feel that he had provided enough for her.
Oh my gosh, I laughed out loud at this! So quintessentially stereotypically male! It’s not enough to just liven up part of a meal, he has to provide the
    whole thing
.


Thirty-Nine Rules for Making a Hawaiian Funeral into a Drinking Game

With “This Is Paradise,” this is my co-favorite story in the collection. It’s told list-style, which I’ve had so much fun writing and reading in the past. It’s also a real slice-of-life, slipping in history and background while still remaining firmly in the present, at the funeral. I feel closer to Hawaiian culture in this story than any other, perhaps because it is told from the perspective of an outsider with an in: someone who understands what’s going on, as a Hawaiian herself, but feels detached from it as someone who is no longer a “local.”

Portrait of a Good Father

146) “Leave her alone. She’s tired.” John-Boy smiles at her, that small, secret smile, the one that says he knows what she’s thinking and won’t tell, and Sarah smiles back.
Aw, what a good brother!

151) Sarah learns to tell the story the same way every time. The same pauses, the same lift of her voice at the part where her parents show up at the hospital, the same embarrassed glance downward when she describes telling Robert to call 911. … “The story can be summed up in three words: hit and run.” That is how she always opens. … She wants her listener to nod in recognition while she speaks. But she also hopes her audience finds her story completely incomprehensible.
So in a recent episode of
    Elementary
, a criminal was identified because the repetition of their story of the crime was too consistent: liars tend to use the same words in the same patterns, while those telling the truth mix things up more. This made me deeply uncomfortable because I definitely have stories that I tell and advice that I give almost the same way each time. I understand that there’s probably more of a method to this kind of detection than could be explained in a 45-minute TV episode, but it still doesn’t quite seem fair: having your story hammered down can provide a kind of closure. And in any case, for centuries exact memorization was the only way to remember stories at all! You calling Homer a liar? Well, I mean…oh, never mind.


164-165) “Would it have been worse for you if it had been me instead of John-Boy?” … “No, it would have been da same.” Sarah knows this is the right answer, the one her father should give. The answer, in fact, that she had told herself she wanted to hear. But instead of relief, she feels betrayal. … “What if it had been Jake? … Or Mom? Or Joon? … It would have been worse for you if it was Joon.” … Keaka slams his hand against the door frame and turns his back to her. “It no be different if it was Joon. I love you all the same.” “Yea, that’s the problem.” Sarah’s voice boils with anger. “How dare you love me the same as her.”
This moment was so profoundly sad. Here are two people who love each other deeply but don’t have the vocabulary, or the freedom from social taboos, to describe just how. Yes, parents aren’t supposed to pick favorites, but the death of any single member of a family would affect each of the other members of that family differently. Most starkly, in this situation the main character’s father is giving the “right” answer when he says that he loves his wife and daughter the same. They are both valuable to him as people, and he loves them both—I’ll even go out on a limb and give him the benefit of the doubt that he does love them in similar measure—but the quality of that love is different. The love one feels for a spouse is almost never the same kind of love one feels for a child—and that’s okay. That’s what makes some people fight so hard to protect their children. That’s what makes some people stick with their partner through sickness and suffering. I think that both father and daughter in this story understand this on a basic level, but they don’t know how to express this in a way that they think the other will accept: a common tragedy of being human.


The Old Paniolo Way

I know the last story is supposed to be one of the highlights of a collection, but this one just didn’t do it for me. It was obvious (to me) from the moment I learned that the main character was gay, [major that his dad was going to die while he was off canoodling with the love interest. Would have been the same if one of the love interests had been female and the couple heterosexual: sex almost always is punished in fiction, especially when it’s not heterosexual and traditional]. Which is a shame, because there were a lot of lovely details in here that I liked.

207) “In some ways it doesn’t matter if it’s AIDS or cancer or any other disease. Dying is what makes someone a pariah. For some people, all they have at the end is their nurse. No one else will face death with them."
( )
  books-n-pickles | Oct 29, 2021 |
Gorgeous, heart-breaking, life-affirming. I love how these stories are so uniquely Hawaiian and absolutely universal all at once. The rest will remain for my own reflection. I do hope Kahakauwila gives us more in the years to come. ( )
  LibroLindsay | Jun 18, 2021 |
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"A visceral, poignant, and elegantly gritty work of debut fiction set in Hawaii, in the vein of Junot Diaz's Drown and Danielle Evans's Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self This is the real Hawai'i: life is not the paradisical adventure that honeymooners or movie-goers see. Danger lurks on beautiful beaches, violence bubbles under the smooth surf, and characters come face to face with the inevitability of change and the need to define who they are against the forces of tradition and expectation. In these stories, a young woman decides to take revenge on the man who had her father murdered - only to find that her father wasn't who she thought he was. Three different groups of Hawaiian women observe and comment on the progress of an American tourist through one day and one night in Honolulu. And a young couple have an encounter with a stray dog that shakes their relationship to the core. Intimately tied to the Hawaiian Islands, This is Paradise explores the relationships among native Hawaiians, local citizens, and emigrants from (and to) the contiguous forty-eight states. There is tension between locals and tourists, between locals and the military men that populate their communities, between local Hawaiian girls who never leave, and those who do so for higher education and then return. Kahakauwila is a careful observer of her protagonists' actions - and, sometimes, their inaction. Her portrayal of people whose lives have lost their centre of gravity is acute, often heartbreaking, and suffused with a deeply felt empathy.With a contemporary edginess, a mature style, and a sense of history reverberating into the present, This is Paradise is an incredible debut"--

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