Ka Lamakua

By Aiko Yamashiro Editor’s note: Like Hawai‘i, French Polynesia suffered a period of colonial suppression, when indigenous languages and traditions were banned, discouraged, and commodified for outside consumption. Similar to Hawaii’s cultural revival in the 1970s, poets, musicians, and creative artists led a cultural renaissance in the 1980s and 90s, using art to help reassert [...]

Anne Kennedy is the University of Hawaii’s Distinguished Writer in Residence for Fall 2006. Her newest book is a narrative poem, The Time of the Giants. It is the story about the relationship between a young woman giant and a – “medium-sized,” as she puts it – man. Kennedy speaks of her giant girl as someone [...]

By Alyssa S. Navares He looked inside and now tells others through his books to Chaloookyu Eensai, too. Kaua’i-born poet Jozuf (Joseph) Hadley, also known as Bradajo, uses pidgin as a medium of self-discovery in order to encourage island locals to do the same. “People are always taught to look at what’s outside or at the [...]

Portrait While I cut out family portraits I cut out all the self-portraits and sullen sitting girls out of my over-sized, slick hard cover Frida Kahlo book. I taped them, all those people in their rectangles, onto my scuffed wall. A bit of tape on all four corners. And the wall looked a lot better. [...]