03 April 2011

Unfamiliar Fishes

I want to get rid of all of my books.

I want to give them to a library and have everything in a readable format on my iPhone.  I want to throw out my sagging book shelves and have everything on my phone.  Reading on my iPhone has been fun and easy and my bedside table is no longer a tittering pile of hardbacks.  Tittering is a bit of an exaggeration but you get my drift.

Sorry, I just finished Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell and it a history of Hawaii discovered via plate lunch.  Plate lunch is everything that is good in this world.  It is a blending of cultures on one harmonious plate.

Sarah Vowell gives you a well researched subjugation of the Hawaiian people at the hands of Americans.  It shows the draw of Hawaii, clash of cultures, it shows the power of Alfred Thayer Mahan's classic work that dictates US foreign policy and Hawaii's vital role in our national security, and it shows us that money drives decisions.  Reading passages about how the annexation/statehood party set up voting eligibility standards that left off asians and only the most educated persons is heart breaking.  Reading about the overthrow of a peaceful kingdom was uneasy.  Understanding the brutality of Hawaiian civil war and how cliffs in Oahu were sites of battles were soldiers were pushed to their deaths makes me yearn for people who want peace and an end to violence.

Knowing this destroys my slice of paradise.  It's no longer the land of surf and perfect beaches, shave ice, mini-plate lunch and Korean BBQ joints next to strip clubs.  It's now a chain of islands that shows the worse of humanity.  We killed all the native Americans, we decimated the native Hawaiians what's left??  Power and governing should be about what is best for the people.  Hawaii has changed.  Everything changes, sometimes for the worst but humans are adaptable and we change for the best.  This book make me want to go back to see the other side of Hawaii.  Maybe this is why I l ike history and useums, we have to understand where we come form if we are to evolve and push forward.

The book is great read and you will really appreciate the islands when you go.


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