Unfamiliar Fishes Read online

  “Over the Rainbow” is as sweet and soft as trade winds rustling through palms. It is the perfect song for Hawaiian vacations because the tranquility of its sound captures the feeling tourists flock there to find. Even though it’s a song that is actually about the human inability to be happy where one is, the suspicion that joy is always somewhere else. It is not unlike the hymns the New England missionaries brought to Hawaii, advertisements for heaven, that other elusive elsewhere where troubles melt like lemondrops. The trick of Iz’s tender arrangement of the song is how convincing a case he makes that finally, and for once, You Are Here.

  In “Hawaii ’78,” on the other hand, Iz confronts the price of that dreamy little swindle. Storm clouds gather over a crowded city, unless those are exhaust fumes. He wonders what Kamehameha the Great would think of his kingdom being mucked up with highways and condominiums. “Cry for the land,” Iz moans. Earnest and mournful, as if singing from the bizarro B side of “Over the Rainbow,” in “Hawaii ’78” he reaches an opposite conclusion: “Our land is in great, great danger now.”

  “What is this song about?” Owen wondered.

  “It’s about how people like us wrecked this place,” I say. Then the Filipina waitress came by and asked him if he would like more juice.

  Still, the song is not only about that. Iz’s teary list of all the tacky changes that would bring tears to the eyes of the old warrior king concludes, “And then yet you’ll find Hawaii.” Which is true. Hawaii can still be found: in the swaying hips of high school students performing hula dances down the hill from David Malo’s grave; in the arms of men rowing an outrigger canoe below the cave where Queen Kaahumanu was born; in the fingertip of an old man pointing to his ancestors’ names on an antique petition; and every time two Hawaiians really say hello, touching noses, breathing each other in.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank: my old pal and taskmaster Geoffrey Kloske at Riverhead Books, along with his colleagues Laura Perciasepe, Mih-Ho Cha, Craig Burke, and Susan Petersen Kennedy; David Levinthal for his cover photograph; Steven Barclay and Sara Bixler at Steven Barclay Agency; Jaime Wolf at Pelosi, Wolf, Effron & Spates; Elisa Shokoff at Simon & Schuster Audio; Ted Thompson and Anthony Mascorro for transcribing interview tapes; John Cheever, Ira Glass, Mark Maretzski, and John-Mario Sevilla for reading drafts of the book; and especially Amy Vowell and Owen Brooker for their company in the islands. Also, Jack Alexander, Eric Bogosian, Bill Heinzen, Michael Giacchino, Nick Hornby, Damon Lindelof, Greil Marcus, Jenny Marcus, Bennett Miller, Jim Nelson, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Pat and Janie Vowell, and Wendy Weil.

  For their help and/or hospitality in Hawaii: the archivists at the Bishop Museum Archives, the archivists at Hawaii State Archives, Kekuni Blaisdell, Leimana Brimeyer, the bus drivers of Honolulu, Lynette Cruz, Barbara Dunn at the Hawaiian Historical Society, Tim Dyke, Guy Gaumont, Margaret Hamamoto, Paul Hamamoto, Hawaiian Independence Action Alliance, Lori Gomez-Karinen at Lahainaluna High School, Noelle Kahanu at the Bishop Museum, Ken Kimura of the Lahaina Restoration Foundations, Gaylord Kubota, Kepa Maly at Lanai Culture & Heritage Center, Barbara Morgan and Carlyn Tani at Punahou School, Keanu Sai, Mike Smola at Mission Houses Museum, and Carol White at Mission Houses Museum Library and Archives. I am especially grateful to Laurel “Seeti” Douglass for sharing her knowledge, enthusiasm, and time.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  *recommended reading

  Jacob Adler, Claus Spreckels: The Sugar King in Hawaii, 1966.

  Jacob Adler, The Fantastic Life of Walter Murray Gibson, 1986.

  Helena G. Allen, Sanford Ballard Dole, Hawaii’s Only President, 1988.

  Rufus Anderson, History of the Sandwich Islands Mission, 1870.

  Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands, 1847.

  Isabella L. Bird, The Hawaiian Archipelago, 1875.*

  Lady Maria Callcott, et al., Voyage of H.M.S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands, 1826.

  Helen Geracimos Chapin, Shaping History: The Role of Newspapers in Hawaii, 1996.*

  John Charlot, “The Feather Skirt of Nahi‘ena‘ena: An Innovation in Postcontact Hawaiian Art,” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 100, no. 2 (1991).*

  Tom Coffman, Nation Within, 1998.*

  Robert Dampier, To the Sandwich Islands on the H.M.S. Blonde, 1971.

  Gavan Daws, A Dream of Islands, 1980.*

  Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time, 1986.*

  Sanford B. Dole and Lorrin A. Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution, 1936.

  Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, 2007.*

  Edwin Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 1819.

  Walter Murray Gibson, The Diaries of Walter Murray Gibson, 1973.

  John Dominis Holt, On Being Hawaiian, 1964.*

  Piilani Kaluaikoolau, The True Story of Kaluaikoolau, 2001.

  Samuel M. Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii, 1992.

  Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1778-1854, 1938.

  Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1854-1874, 1938.

  Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1874-1893, 1953.

  Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, 1898.*

  Henry Cabot Lodge, Speeches and Addresses, 1884-1909, 1909.

  David Malo, Hawaiian Antiquities, 1987.

  Alfred Thayer Mahan, “Hawaii and Our Future Sea Power,” The Forum, March 1893.

  Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, 1890.*

  Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, 1963.

  Thomas J. Osborne, Empire Can Wait: American Opposition to Hawaiian Annexation, 1893-1898, 1981.*

  Jonathan K. Osorio, Dismembering Lahui, 2002.*

  Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory, 2003.*

  Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, editors, Hawaiian Dictionary, 1986.

  Mary A. Richards, The Hawaiian Chiefs’ Children’s School, 1970.

  Robert C. Schmitt and Eleanor C. Nordyke, “Death in Hawai‘i: The Epidemics of 1848-1849,” The Hawaiian Journal of History, volume 35, 2001.*

  Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 2004.*

  Cummins E. Speakman, Jr., Mowee: An Informal History of the Hawaiian Island, 1978.

  Robert H. Stauffer, Kahana: How the Land Was Lost, 2003.*

  Ronald T. Takaki, Pau Hana, 1986.*

  Nicholas Thomas, Cook, 2003.

  William Henry Thomes, A Whaleman’s Adventures in the Sandwich Islands and California, 1890.

  Lucy Goodale Thurston, Life and Times of Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston, 1882.

  Jon M. Van Dyke, Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawaii?, 2007.*

  Carol Wilcox, Sugar Water, 1998.*

  Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1845.

  Mary Zwiep, Pilgrim Path, 1991.

  ALSO BY SARAH VOWELL

  The Wordy Shipmates

  Assassination Vacation

  The Partly Cloudy Patriot

  Take the Cannoli

  Radio On

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  UNFAMILIAR FISHES

  Acknowledgements

  BIBLIOGRAPHY