by Lehua Parker | May 21, 2013 | Adult Fiction, Book Reviews & Announcements, Pacific Literature
If you scratched Kiana Davenport, beneath her sophisticated, erudite veneer I think you’d find the heartbeat of a no-nonsense Waimanalo titah, a contradiction that makes her work a delight to read.
I just finished Opium Dreams, volume three in her Pacific Stories collection, and like in her previous volumes Cannibal Nights and House of Skin, I found myself slipping into the skins of the narrators. You don’t read her stories so much as breathe them along with her characters. Her eye for the small telling detail that reveals epic amounts of information is exquisite and her deft handling of imagery often makes the prose sing like poetry.
Da titah can write. Period.
I’ve admired Kiana’s work for a long time. Her main characters are often mixed-raced Polynesian women trying to make a life for themselves on the margins of western culture. The women in her stories survive abuse, make poor choices, bow under the burdens of history and culture, and fall to the whims of turn-on-a-dime fate. They also seize life and triumph in ways large and small. They are spectacularly flawed, raw, and real. Kiana has the knack of taking something alien to most western experiences and making it universal.
In Opium Dreams, her stories are about anger and revenge, self-destruction, the inevitable consequences of action vs. inaction, and the grace of forgiveness. In Kiana’s worlds, family is who you chose, and that choice is everything.
Opium Dreams by Kiana Davenport is available as an eBook through Amazon and is her first foray into self-publishing. It’s a steal at 99 cents. Be sure to check out her other titles: House of Skin, Cannibal Nights, Shark Dialogues, House of Many Gods, Song of the Exile, and The Spy Lover. I guarantee you’ll be haunted by these characters’ lives for years.
Connect with Kiana Davenport
Blog: http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kiana.davenport
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BRAXTONRO
by Lehua Parker | May 20, 2013 | Learning ‘Ōlelo
sashimi
(sah-SHEE-mee) (n) Japanese for thinly sliced raw fish. Often confused with sushi on the mainland.
Example
‘When Kalei’s head broke the surface of the large saltwater pool at Piko Point, all he was thinking about was thinly sliced sashimi fanned on a bed of green cabbage and the hot wasabi paste he would mix with shoyu to make a dipping sauce.’ ~ One Shark, No Swim
Note: ‘Ōlelo is a Hawaiian word meaning language, speech, word, etc. To see the current list of Hawaiian and Pidgin words, definitions, and usage please click on
by Lehua Parker | May 16, 2013 | Character Haiku
A bikini smiles
sunlight on golden tan, the
whispered promise sure.
~Jay
by Lehua Parker | May 15, 2013 | Mainland Living
I’m buying a new rug for the downstairs bath. I dashed in there this morning, nose running, scrambling for a wad of toilet paper for what I insist are allergies, but fear is really a cold. Maybe strep. I don’t have time for a doctor. It’s spring hay fever, I’m sure.
Too bad I can’t swallow. That’s normal, right?
Anyway, I should’ve turned the light on, but I was in a hurry, stepping hard and fast across the tile, reaching along the vanity, down near the commode, when it squished.
I flicked on the light real fast.
There it was in the middle of the cutest blue rag rug you ever saw: a dead robin.
Well, part of one.
Did I mention I was barefoot?
I’m getting a new rug.
I wish the cats loved me less.
by Lehua Parker | May 14, 2013 | Adult Fiction, Book Reviews & Announcements, Pacific Literature
Pono is a complex Hawaiian word with connotations of righteousness, balance, and propriety. It’s one of the themes I try to develop in the Niuhi Shark Saga as characters make choices that place them in or out of being pono.
Ho‘o means to do or make; so ho‘o pono describes a way of being, of living one’s life in harmony with correct principles. As a student at The Kamehameha Schools, our Hawaiian culture teacher once told us that if there was only one thing we could remember from our time with her, she wanted it to be the concept of ho‘o pono. While I can’t remember all the place names we memorized, which fish were kapu during which seasons, or the number of voyages to Tahiti and back, I do remember her words about ho‘o pono.
So it was with great interest that I picked up Pali Jae Lee’s book Ho‘o pono: The Hawaiian Way to Put Things Back into Balance. Part oral history, part memoir, the book shares some of the family traditions and stories handed down from Ka‘ili‘ohe and Makaweliweli descendants from Molokai.
One of the central stories is really a parable about ho‘o pono. All children are born with an upright bowl of Light that grows with them and allows them to know and understand all things. But when a child is resentful or envious, he drops a stone into his bowl and a little of the Light goes out. If enough stones fill his bowl, the child becomes like stone, unable to move or grow. By turning his bowl over, the stones fall away and Light comes back.
It’s a simple, beautiful, and elegant metaphor for all the baggage we carry—no matter the era. These and other parables help give a voice to the past in ways that resonate with the future.
There was a time in Hawaiian families when nothing sacred or significant was shared with outsiders because only family would understand and respect the deeper truths. Looking at Hollywood’s version of Hawaiian culture, it’s not a big stretch to say what is often portrayed as Hawaiian has been misinterpreted, twisted, or fabricated out of whole cloth. But times are changing, and as more families are coming forward with their histories that challenge common perceptions, a clearer, truer picture of Hawaiian culture is emerging.
May all your bowls be filled with Light.
Ho‘o pono: The Hawaiian Way to Put Things Back into Balance by Pali Jae Lee is published by I.M. Publishing, Ltd. and is available as an eBook, hardcover, and trade paperback from Amazon.
Connect with Kiana Davenport
