Island World: A History of Hawai'i and the United States » (1st Edition)

Gary Y. Okihiro is Professor of
International and Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. His most recent books are Common Ground: Reimagining American History and Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American
Internment, with Linda Gordon.

"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.)

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List of Illustrations

Introduction 1

1 Regions of Fire 6

2 Oceania's Expanse 43

3 Pagan Priest 72

4 Schooling for Subservience 98

5 Hawaiian Diaspora 135

5 Poetry in Motion 169

7 Islands and Continents 206

Notes 221

Bibliography 269

Index 291