But we know. You need more “in the course of human events” kind of stuff and so…

Here It Is, More:

We feel this town and state needs more literate writing (meaning about literary topics, but also more informed), more lively writing (meaning creative and also, writing not constrained by timid corporate or politically motivated overseers), and more writing that comes out quickly enough to capitalize on topical events, but slowly enough to allow the development of a higher quality than what you generally find elsewhere.

So this review will be a clearinghouse of good stories by good writers that probably couldn’t survive the editorial processes at other local publishers.

As the name indicates, our bread and butter, or poi and aku, or Spam musubi, will be reviewing local literature. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a collection of book reports. That would be so seventh grade. No, books are entry points to broader discussions. We intend to have those discussions in our pieces and in your, the reader’s, reactions to them.

We want to encourage forthright and candid reviewing, so we encourage and publish anonymous reviews. However, these are vetted and edited for snark, careerism, inaccuracy, simplistic generalities and rank boosterism. (No, you can’t review your own book, even though Whitman did.)

We will entertain any submitted work on any subject from long-form nonfiction to tiny haiku book reviews (it’s our proprietary thing). Try us.

There’s a principle in reading submissions that goes like this: First sentence, first paragraph, first page—at any point we may stop and say, nope, not for us. So work on your work before submitting. Pro tip: Don’t spend paragraphs clearing your throat.

No, we don’t pay anything. We do accept gift cards from Longs.

Q: Are we inclusive? A: Try us.

Want to meet us and talk? Sure. Bring malassadas.

FOR THOSE FROM AWAY

A Short Guide to Island Intellectual and Literary Etiquette Including a Two-Word Glossary:

Hawaii is the proper term, not Hawaiian, unless you are explicitly referring to things kanaka maoli, or Native Hawaiian. That goes across the board. You cannot become Hawaiian by birth or residency. We get that, now you get it. What else? There are other points of view than ours in the Islands and by people of these Islands living around the world. Seek them out. What else? White people tend to be called haole. Get used to it, how-lee. What else? Hawaii was illegally overthrown in 1893 and annexed by the United States in a slow-rolling coup d’etat—the first sponsored by the USA—that began in the 1820s with a rapacious sanctimonious racist capitalist assault by New England missionaries, whalers, traders and layabouts from around the globe who surfed four major epidemics that ravaged the vulnerable kanaka maoli. What else? After the Kingdom of Hawaii and Kauai lost 90 percent of their population the white settlers rebuilt a society based on racial oppression and all-but-slave labor, augmented by drafts of immigrants: Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans. (Portuguese were brought in as overseers to the sugar plantations—they carried bullwhips and rode horseback and had their way with the women—and kept their privilege, though ranked by the “whites” as slightly beneath them.) What else? The white missionary and planter class who had married Hawaiian royalty to obtain their lands now closed ranks and created a mixed-race aristocracy of class and wealth that excluded Native Hawaiians who were darker and poorer. Yes, and? Visiting writers and sojourners traded in the exotic, erotic, Oriental and sentimental tropes tropiques, establishing an identity for Hawaii as a place to come and indulge yourself and be welcomed and served, even serviced, with aloha, a term appropriated to provide cover for all the taking. What else? Over time Japanese sugar and pineapple workers proved most amenable to indentured labor and their numbers grew close to a majority. The white and mixed (hapa) Hawaiian caste instituted measures of population control—Filipino indentured workers were not allowed to bring in wives, for example—but it was too late. What else? The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was an inevitable result of U.S. and Japanese imperial ambitions in the Pacific and Far East and war was anticipated by most sentient beings in Hawaii and the West Coast (the East Coast faced Europe so that’s what they cared most about). Yes, and? The day of Pearl Harbor the territorial governor declared martial law. The military promptly threw the government out of the ‘Iolani Palace and took over, immediately instituting harsh measures against the darker, poorer, working classes. Even the haole plantation caste were appalled, but they could do nothing. Attorneys, including government lawyers in Washington, D.C., spent the war years fighting an internal war against the U.S. Army in Hawaii, which was conspiring to have the entire state turned into a military outpost. (See Bayonets in Paradise.) All this while the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed of Japanese-Americans, many from Hawaii, incurred the highest casualty rate of any American unit in World War II and in U.S. military history. What next? In the post-war 1940s labor and political consciousness led by Filipinos and Japanese grew into a gradual but stubborn resistance to the white planter rule. Strikers and activists were assaulted, killed, banned from employment, deported, investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When statehood approached in 1959, a public relations campaign to boost tourism included a novel written by James Michener, Hawaii, that would shape perceptions already in place from the early days of European Contact. It’s not a bad or ill-intentioned book, far from it, but then this happened. What do you mean? The literary establishments in the U.S. took Michener’s bestseller as an excuse to ignore writing from Hawaii for the next 40 years, with a handful of honorable exceptions that only proved the rule. Which brings us to: Concurrent and opposed to the image of Mainstream Mainland Michener Hawaii in popular culture there started in the 1950s a Native Hawaiian Renaissance paired with the ongoing labor and political struggle that also birthed a musical and literary movement that included all the varied races and cultures here. All these strands brought a local culture made by locals for locals to the forefront of Island consciousness. It’s a cultural expression now unique among American states in that it is self-contained and also expanding—and is very much grassroots, not top-down, in nature. That’s why we’re here, now. This is what we do. We’re doing it. We don’t need outside validation, although it would be nice, but we do request that if you’re not from here, you respect the work that generations have put in and don’t use it as a backdrop for your literary fantasies, epiphanies, revelations, spiritual quests, detective stories, occult mysteries about volcanoes and virgins and… What else? Surfing. The lineup is too crowded already. If you must come, give waves, give respect, give us space. We live here. Finally, when all is said and done… This is the only majority minority state in the U.S. Think about that and think of how we live that reality. There are those who don’t like this and think it’s disgraceful—Southerners, military, people in red hats. There are even more who want to buy condos and second homes and buy up houses for vacation rentals (all illegal, by the way) and force the middle class, the poorer and less privileged among us out, away, go to Vegas already! Are you okay with that? We didn’t think so. So we’re good? You are now free to exhale, exit the cabin, step back into the issue and enjoy the fruits of this complicated Island history and its expression. Aloha.

T.H.R.O.B. |'THräb|

Definition, 1 of 3 —

1: VERB, to pulsate or pound with abnormal force or rapidity.

2: VERB, to beat or vibrate rhythmically.

ORIGIN—late 18th cent.: Italian, from Latin, ‘wheat.’

3: NOUN, an abbreviation of The Hawai‘i Review of Books.

ORIGIN—early 2021, HNL

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