This Is Paradise: Stories

See original review on my blog: gaming4justice.comThis is Paradise is a short story collection written by Kristiana Kahakauwila, a hapa author of kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), German and Norwegian extract. In efforts to set up this blogging event, a person contacted me through my blog with the recommendation I reach out to and possibly feature Kristiana during this month. I immediately went to Goodreads to find out more and purchased the e-book version of This is Paradise: Stories. Over the course of this year, I am more and more interested in short story collections, poetry collections, and anthologies. I love the diversity of stories told within one collection and I love how a collection comes together as a whole. This collection has many powerful themes and cohesively has a messages for readers about love, family, loss, tragedy, authenticity, and belonging. In total, this collection consists of six stories.This is Paradise is steeped in culture and tells stories from the real Hawaii. Now, I know these stories are not the only stories from Hawaii and not the only experiences of Native Hawaiian people. We cannot fall into the trap of a single story. I use the phrase real Hawaii because I think this collection challenges the dominant narrative of Hawaii as a place of tourism and paradise. The stories expose a truth we do not hear often. They expose a truth that includes culture, pain, belonging, family, and loss. They push back against what we think of Hawaii – beaches, surfing, resorts, and fancy alcoholic beverages. We need these challenges because we are not taught much of anything about Hawaii in US History classes, except a brief overview of its statehood. Kristiana’s six uniquely Hawaiian stories are a start in the right direction.I want to highlight three out of the six stories. By no means does this mean I did not like the other three. These three stood out to me for various reasons.This is ParadiseThis is the first story in the collection as well asthe title of the entire collection. Similar to what I was walking about above, this story is a direct challenge to the dominant narrative and perceptions of Hawaii. The story follows a group of local women who are going out at night. They see a tourist at the bar/club they go to and see that tourist woman interact with a local they know to be dangerous. They attempt to look after the tourist but they are quickly dismissed as local “fun killers.” In my interpretation of the story, this is less about the dangers of Hawaii and more about the perception of paradise from outsiders and tourists. The drastic imagery and tragedy in this story tells me as a reader, I do not know the real Hawaii and other outsiders do not know the real Hawaii. I liked that this is the story that opens the collection. It sets the tone for the next five stories and the types of themes we as readers will experience.The Road to HanaThe Road to Hana grabbed me because it deals with the struggle of what it means to be from somewhere. The main character is constantly debating whether he is local, whether he is Hawaiian. The symbolism is strong on the drive to Hana, focusing on themes of belonging and authenticity. I have had similar thoughts throughout my life when it comes to racial, ethnic, and national origin identity. As a multiracial person where do I belong? In what communities will I be accepted in? Even if I am from somewhere or of a particular decent, will the people there consider me a part of the community? I enjoyed this story because for me it brought up more questions than answers and made me think of my own identities and positionalities.The Old Paniolo WayIn this short story, the author explores sexual orientation identity within the context of culture. In subtle ways, the story exposes the homophobia and transphobia in the community and the main character’s specific family and illustrates the his struggle between living fully in their own identity and doing what he thinks he must to keep their family together. For me, this story was powerful because it was held together by the backdrop of a dying parent. I had a deep personal reaction to this story particularly with the relationship between the main character and his sister. Without giving too much away, his sister says something towards the end that breaks my heart about intentions and impacts of coming out. It made me reflect on my own family and my own relationship with my sister. As the closing short story, I found it to take the reader to a natural conclusion in the collection.Overall, a fantastic collection of short stories from a hapa Native Hawaiian author. I would recommend you try a find a copy – my best advice would be through amazon. I think the e-copy of the book is around $12 and you may be able to find a print copy through online sources. I am looking forward to what Kristiana will write next! She is an author I will be keeping an eye on.Final Rating 4.4/5

Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection of stories is a beautifully expressed bundle of unexpected, original, authentic offerings. (Full disclosure: Tiana, as I then knew her, was my student as a high school junior in 1997-1998.)All the stories are set in Hawaii and its essence deeply, almost religiously, binds and animates the literature she makes. If you're white, like me, and grew up on the American mainland from the 1950s onward, you, along with about 230 million of your current co-Caucasians, have a fairytale-idyllic-hula-swaying-Mai-Tai-sippin'-Don Ho-doomed entirely clichéd vision of what Hawaii and its people are really like.Though I lived in Honolulu for two years in the early 80s, the stories in this book still exploded many of my (mis)conceptions about the people, their islands, and the often tragic political/historical past Hawaii's descendants still mourn. In "Requiem for A Nun" William Faulkner wrote "The past is never dead. It's not even past." That reality burns through this book like a terrible, if distant, blaze in the mind.To be clear: Hawaii's royal past, American takeover, and longing for cultural return are the background music, the melodies native Hawaiians hum in fragments even they can't always recall the origin of. TK's true, deep territory here is the human heart, what makes it, what breaks it. As Jack Kroll, a long-gone Newsweek critic once wrote in a line I've never forgotten: "The human heart is the only broken thing that still works." TK grasps that idea to soul and bone - and it's that grasp which pulses through these stories to give them such human weight and the density of real life as it is actually lived.I loved all six of these stories, not least because they were each so different. But mainly because TK took me to places and times I'd never been, or even seen - and I don't mean just geographically. She takes chances. She makes unpredictable moves, thematically, structurally, otherwise. She writes with an austere, graceful beauty, evoking the physical world in spare brushstrokes, and the inner world(s) with the same less-is-more psychological acuity.She's terrific at what I'd call human suspense - the rise, fall and minor shocks of daily life, of families, of people trying to figure each other out. The stories unfold with real narrative energy, their secrets, small and large, emerging as they often do in life, offhandedly, with the muffled echoes of hindsight reverberating. She knows how to be funny, and when not to be.You can tell she's trying (and, I think, succeeding) to be a real artist on every page. She's trying to tell you something you don't know, about people who have been or will be just like you, in ways that slide right through your defenses. She knows the profound, sometimes surreal, occasionally epic strangeness of life and people - and just what in the hell goes on with them. She shows how desperate our longings to be heard, touched, known, felt can be. She shows how desire connects to loss - and how even when we know that's what's going to happen (again), we can't help it anyway.She gets the high stakes and takes them on, open-hearted and ready for failure as the price youth pays for any ambition worth its name. She's interested in the motives and meanings that drive people, what makes them move and act, decide to live or die, give up or give in. All the big questions. And even a few answers along the way.What more do you want?So read it.

For those who are simply fans of evocative writing that captivates you from the first sentence and carries you hungrily through each story, this book is not only a must read, it sets a standard. Kristiana Kahakauwila is that good. She not only entertains, she makes you think and feel while giving Haoles like me a very real and visceral taste of what life is like for some of the people who live and work in Paradise. But make no mistake. These stories, while they sometimes show tourists in an unflattering light, are not really any kind of diatribe against tourists or tourism. They are, rather, realistic portraits of persons who are navigating their way through life in a nuanced culture with its own internal diversities who also sometimes need to deal with the external diversities and difficulties imposed by the industry that sustains much of their economy and a dominant culture whose values are not really a good fit for either their historic or evolving ways of being. I really think it should be a must read for anyone who wants more than a tourist experience of Hawaii. It is a good reminder for those of us who visit the islands frequently, who feel at home there, that we need to be aware, respectful and gracious guests. All that aside, however, these are simply really good stories very well told. And that, when all is said and done, is what good writing and good reading is all about.

Beautifully crafted and written stories. The only thing that disappointed me about this collection was that I wanted several of the stories to be longer. Over so soon? I missed the characters. If you are non-Hawaiian and have visited but wonder what you missed, or are thinking of visiting and don't want to see the islands only through filtered tourist eyes, island-hop through this book.