January 11, 2015
Double-entry day, but of course this is the only book I actually finished today. Theoretically, I should have loved it. Vowell's tone in her writing appeals to me: sometimes snarky, with many pop culture references. Her views on imperialism, religion, and culture coincide with my own. And the book is about the history of the Westernization of Hawaii, and I always want to read about different people and places. But while I found this book to be interesting, I did not love it.
I guess my main beef is with the organization. The book isn't long at all, barely over 200 pages in the edition I read. But it's not divided up into chapters, and there aren't any headings, as Vowell delves in to over a century of Hawaiian history, with lots of supplementary material to go with. It actually reminds me of Mark Twain's autobiography in that Vowell frequently goes on tangents. The difference here is that Vowell's thought process wasn't always easy to follow as she kind of jumped around with who or what she was talking about. Headings would have been rather helpful here.
The story of how Hawaii eventually became a state, as Vowell observes, follows a pattern of colonization seen at that time around the world. First, Hawaii became acquainted with the world at large when British explorers came upon it. They also traded with Asia (particularly China I think) back in the 18th century. Much of Vowell's text deals with the influence of New England missionaries in the early 19th century, and while Vowell acknowledges the positives in this relationship (such as the creation of a written form of the Hawaiian language), she is mostly critical of these puritanical haoles.
As more and more haoles came into contact with native Hawaiians, disease killed off a huge percentage of the population. After the missionary group in New England ended the funding there, the children of those missionaries would go on to take over Hawaii's government, overthrowing the queen and pushing for annexation by the U.S. Vowell explores the difficulties faced by Hawaii's leaders leading up to this coup; trade made them prosperous, and the leaders who had been educated in missionary schools wanted to Westernize, even Christianize, Hawaii to a certain extent.
There is still discontent in Hawaii today. Vowell writes that, when there were celebrations for Hawaii's 50th anniversary of statehood, protesters held up signs declaring "We are not American". There's still a conflict; on the one hand, tourism is now Hawaii's main economic source, so the haoles are the ones bringing in the cash. But while there's still an interest in Hawaii's traditional culture, there's some bastardization of it to suit tourists. It makes me think of the South Park episode "Going Native," which I think is a brilliant supplement to this text.
I read a review on Goodreads in which the reviewer stated that she's a fan of Vowell's work, but was not enamored with this particular text. I definitely like Vowell's writing style, if I was put off by the organization. I will definitely have to see what other topics she's written on. I'll give her another shot if any topics jump out at me.
No comments:
Post a Comment