On Shame, Or

I hate myself.

Yes, I said it.

I hate myself… and, if you’re Local, there’s a pretty good chance that you do, too.

Sorry. That’s a hell of an opening statement right there, and in my defense, I wasn’t expecting to write it until I did.

I originally set out to write this piece, not as a mea culpa for my own self-loathing, but rather as a very direct, point-by-point response and update to esteemed scholar (and all-around good braddah) Lee Tonouchi’s 2009 essay “Hidden Pidgin: Da Absence of Pidgin in Hawai‘i Hip Hop,” which is itself a very interesting (and, I’ll admit, a far more scholarly) exploration of the reasons behind the notable lack of Pidgin in Hawai‘i’s rap scene. [1]

I found its central premise fascinating, and I wanted to see if I, as a member of the Hawai‘i Hip Hop community, could shine some new light on the subject, fifteenish years after Lee first wrote it. After all, who better to provide insight into the issue than a two-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano Hip Hop Album of the Year award-winning rapper?

A lot of people, probably, but none of them bothered to write about it, so you’re stuck with me. Sorry, braddahs and sistahs.

Some Necessary Context

I probably ought to clarify what, exactly, I mean when I say that there is so little Pidgin rapping to be found in Hawai‘i Hip Hop, and define what, exactly, Hawai‘i Hip Hop actually is—as well as what it isn’t. Though there is some debate, generally speaking, Hawai‘i Hip Hop is understood to be the culture and (as the primary focus of this piece) music of Hip Hop in Hawai‘i [2], as opposed to Hawaiian Hip Hop (often associated with the name Nā Mele Paleoleo, though this too is not universally agreed upon), which is defined as Hip Hop music made by Kānaka Maoli artists about issues affecting Hawai‘i and Hawaiians, often rapped in ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i [3].

In other words, Hawai‘i Hip Hop is distinct from Hawaiian Hip Hop the same way that Local people are distinct from Hawaiians; Hawaiian Hip Hop is always Hawai‘i Hip Hop, but Hawai‘i Hip Hop is not always Hawaiian Hip Hop.

Since 2009, when Mr. Tonouchi’s initial essay was written, Pidgin has become a more common feature in Hawai‘i Hip Hop, though its state remains more or less the same as when he penned it. Still, one need look no further than the music of some of the subgenre’s biggest stars, like Da Angry Locals, Punahele, or 8RO8, to hear a wide variety of Pidgin words being rapped or sung. This is especially true for the younger generation of Local rappers. And yet, even then, to quote Tonouchi, “only get sprinklings [of Pidgin] hea and dea for flava.” [4]

Truly, for every “Pidgin 101” by Osnizzle, there are ten songs that are basically indistinguishable from anything released by mainland emcees, despite a few Pidgin words thrown into their bars. Even then, “Pidgin 101” and other similar songs tend to lean into a more humorous delivery, which confirms Tonouchi’s observation that comedic rap seems to get a pass for being performed completely in Pidgin in a way that non-comedic songs and artists do not—perhaps because Local artists don’t even consider doing more serious songs in Pidgin since, deep down, they might not consider Pidgin a truly serious language. [5]

Whatever the reason, it’s still surprisingly rare to find a Hawai‘i rap song performed totally in Pidgin. [6]

Rapping in Pidgin vs Rapping with Pidgin

It is a very common trend in the Hawai‘i Hip Hop sphere to see artists have their songs, albums, or even their rap names in Pidgin, with music videos and promo pics that are steeped in Local style and aesthetic… but when you turn on their music, you’d never guess that they were Local. Because rappers are a notoriously sensitive bunch, and as an admission that I participate in this same phenomenon as much as anyone else, I will avoid singling out any particular emcee by name and instead use as an example songs from my own discography to highlight what I’m talking about.

For example, the music video for my song “sugar//shoyu” is chock-full of “Local” visuals, from the slo-mo shots of my grandfather’s many boar tusks hanging outside his shed to the various settings (swapping out palm trees and beaches for rundown community parks, rugged streets, and my own humble kitchen), to the prominent display of my “bradahoodz” tattoo. The song is also full of Pidgin words, like “braddahs,” “loco moco,” and “batu.” And yet, again, for all that Local flavoring, I am rapping with Pidgin words, not actually rapping in Pidgin.

If that’s still not clear enough, let me just show you the difference. Below is an excerpt from my song with fellow Hawai‘i artist DJ Jus Jay, “Change the World:”

“[We were] so broke, so shame, we never had a way out/

Braddahs hooked on cocaine, tryna move that weight out/

Wanna have a breakdown, every other day now/

But you know I can’t quit, so I gotta pray now I ain’t pau/” [7]

At first blush, that verse may come across as a pretty fair approximation of Pidgin, which of course was the idea. I wanted to use some of these words and phrases in my verse without actually rapping it in Pidgin. If I were to do that, it would read something more like this:

[We was] so broke, so shame, neva had one way out/

Braddahs hooked on cocaine, tryin fo move dat weight out/

I like have one breakdown, every odda day now/

But I no can quit, so I gotta pray dat I not pau/

Obviously, some of this is lost in translation, as the actual delivery of my raps in English and Pidgin, respectively, is a key component in differentiating between the two; Pidgin is, after all, still primarily a spoken language. And yet, even acknowledging the linguistic similarities, you can see the contrasts, both obvious (words and phrases) and more subtle (grammar and sentence structure). Think of it like the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, which have a written mutual intelligibility of somewhere between eighty-seven to ninety percent [8] but a spoken intelligibility that is markedly less than that.

I’m not going to beat a dead horse here and go on about how Pidgin is a legitimate and separate language from English, but I do think it’s important to highlight the nuanced ways in which they differ, to help illustrate why throwing some Pidgin words into your verse doesn’t automatically make it a Pidgin rap song.

Let’s get back to the original question, posed by Mr. Tonouchi in 2009, that was the catalyst for this piece: “hakum no more so much Pidgin in Hawai‘i Hip Hop?” [9] It’s a deep question with many possible answers, and, as I’m sure you’ve realized if you’ve managed to make it this far, one that is much too complex for me to tackle in a single essay. In fact, in the months since I first began to wrestle with this topic, I realized two things: one, that a truly thorough answer to the question Mr. Tonouchi has asked would have to be expressed in book form; and two, that rapping and writing about rapping are two very different skill sets. [10]

And so, for both reasons, and also for my own sanity, I'll get right to the root of the issue I want to address: shame.

To Tree, or Not to Tree

Shame. It's not only at the bottom of the mystery of Pidgin's relative rarity in Hip Hop, but also the foundation of Hawai‘i's complicated relationship with Pidgin more generally. Let me illustrate: when I was in kindergarten, there was a substitute teacher, who we will call Mrs. C, who filled in for my usual teacher from time to time. Mrs. C was a strict woman, though clearly well-meaning, who had immigrated to Hawai‘i some years before from the Philippines. Unsurprisingly, she had a very thick Filipino accent. This in and of itself was, obviously, nothing to be ashamed of. However, I note the presence of Mrs. C’s accent in order to better, well, accentuate the irony of the following exchange:

One day, Mrs. C was teaching us basic addition and subtraction, going through a list of equations and asking us to give the correct answer to each one. “One plus one equals two, and two plus two equals four, so what does one plus two equal?” she asked the class.

Kenny, the boy sitting in front of me, raised his hand excitedly. 

“Yes, Kenneth?” asked Mrs. C.

“Tree!” said Kenny proudly, holding up three fingers. Mrs. C. fixed him with a cool stare and pointed to the monkeypod tree outside our classroom.

“No, that is a tree,” she replied. “This is a three.” She wrote the number 3 on the board. The rest of the class laughed while Kenny lowered his head in shame.

Now, to be fair, I hardly think Mrs. C. can be held entirely responsible for Kenny’s subsequent descent into casual drug use, bullying, and juvenile delinquency, but it’s worth noting that, as best as I can recall, I don’t ever remember seeing Ken raise his hand again in class—and I went to school with him from kindergarten to graduation.

To be clear, Mrs. C was not the norm—many of my teachers, being Local themselves, spoke Pidgin regularly, both inside and outside the classroom, and the majority of them did not actively discriminate against it. Nor, however, did they celebrate it. It was, to hear them tell it, Hawai‘i’s unique dialect, endearing in its own, simple way, but essentially just slang. Certainly, nobody I knew considered it a proper language in those days. The general consensus amongst the Local teachers seemed to be that we would do well to be able to code switch—to make sure we could “turn it off” whenever we needed to, as Pidgin was not appropriate in many settings. [11]

On the other hand, I could tell you a thousand other stories like the Ballad of Kenny and Mrs. C, not all so dramatic, but all of which served to chip away, little by little, at the viability of Pidgin, in our impressionable school-aged minds, as a proper form of academic expression or communication. Time and time again, certain authority figures (often not from Hawai‘i, and sometimes, as in the case of Mrs. C., sporting their own accents and struggles with English), would put down our mother tongue, criticizing it as “not appropriate for school” at best, and mocking it for being “low-class” at worst.

In the absence of any positive reinforcement about Pidgin—no encouragement that, if we were all able to speak both Pidgin and English, we were actually bilingual, for example—the negative eventually began to fill the void. In time, I, like many Locals in Hawai‘i, grew to look down on Pidgin, even as I spoke it with my braddahs at recess, which, no doubt, helped to internalize my own nascent sense of shame, as I was forced to confront a certain level of hypocrisy within myself for consistently daring to speak such “bad English.”

Shame in Local Culture

Back to hating myself.

The issue of Hawai‘i’s shame problem looms large over our culture, but it isn’t one we like to talk about. Inherited in part from the Asian immigrants (particularly those from East Asian countries, including China, Japan, and Korea, as they have historically been heavily influenced by Confucian ideology, which emphasizes shame as a form of social regulation, [12] i.e. making sure everyone gets along well for the benefit of society) who were brought over to work the plantation fields, I would argue that this imported shame undergirds our society to a degree that is almost crippling.

If that weren’t enough, all of that is stacked upon the less talked about, but still very real, shame that already existed, and still exists, in Pacific Islander cultures. I mean, it makes sense: having a bunch of people living on a few, small islands can get pretty cramped, which means you have to be on your best behavior, or things will be harder for both you and your family as a whole. As psychologist Amelia Rachel Hokule’a Borofsky notes in an article for The Atlantic, “shame and ridicule are actually common ways to regulate behavior in small Pacific Island communities.” [13]

I found that subject both fascinating and relatable, but sadly there wasn’t much scholarly research available on it. Wanting to delve deeper into the subject through a non-Hawai‘i Polynesian lens, I tried to talk about it with a writer friend from Samoa, but guess what? She was too shame to let me quote her!

Now, I don’t have any surveys to cite or scholarly articles to refer you to on this one (if it doesn’t show up on the first page of Google Scholar, does it even exist?), but I‘d bet a sizable portion of my life savings—aka nearly twenty bucks—that the average Local person spends an inordinate amount of time each day trying their best not to embarrass themselves, or their families, or their friends, or their coworkers, or their bosses, or their acquaintances, or their aunty’s cousin’s best friend’s uncle’s roommate’s dog etc. etc. etc. you get the idea. Always, always, always, we are trying not to make shame, and this has consequences.

As you can imagine, if you spend the vast majority of your time, consciously or not, trying not to embarrass or be embarrassed, you will be extra hard on yourself any time embarrassment occurs, magnifying the shame you feel, and, I suspect, making yourself feel as though you are inherently embarrassing, in and of yourself—and thus, the cycle continues. 

There is a saying we learn as children in Hawai‘i that dictates our every move: “The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down” [14] (though “no make ass” is, perhaps, the proper Pidgin way to say it). Chances are, if you’re reading this article and you’re from Hawai‘i, you already know what I’m talking about. If you aren’t, there’s a possibility you may never understand, but I will try my best to explain. You see, Hawai‘i is just so…small. Even the Big Island, Hawai’i, or the capital, Honolulu, are both quite tiny when compared to our continental counterparts.

Everybody knows everybody here, and if they don’t know you, they definitely know your family, or, at the very least, they are a friend of a friend. Case in point: when I met Mr. Tonouchi (at a Bamboo Ridge rollout event for a book we’d both been published in), we originally connected because we had a friend in common, thus paving the way for this essay to happen.

In Hawai‘i, seven degrees of separation is more like one degree. No wonder we have to be on our best behavior at all times! If not, word of our ass-making will eventually get back to the people we know, and, because each island is too small to truly lose yourself in, you will have to repeatedly see these people in your day to day life, whether at work, school, church, the grocery store, or when you go outside in your underwear to grab the newspaper really fast in the morning—and each time they will be a fresh reminder of your shame.

Shameful Behavior

Now, what on earth does any of this have to do with rapping in Pidgin, or the lack thereof? Well, this is my theory: us Local people are, deep down, kind of embarrassed about ourselves. We’re embarrassed of where we live (how many times have you apologized to guests when they come over to your place?), of how we act, and certainly of how we talk. Of course we don’t like ourselves. We are obsessed with not shaming ourselves, so it’s only natural we wouldn’t like the person who routinely causes us to be shame, even if that person is us.

The fact is that, from a young age, most of us are trained to be hypersensitive to anything that could offend or cause embarrassment and expending this kind of mental energy every waking moment of our lives, even if it is usually subconscious, even if it functions like a sort of social behavior autopilot, is exhausting. There are so many ways it can go wrong. Let me paint a clearer picture by giving you some personal examples from my own life:

When I was thirteen, a friend of mine kept inviting me to go see Star Wars (Episode III, aka my favorite!) with him and his family, and I really wanted to go. I mean, who wouldn’t? It was Star Wars! Episode III! Revenge of the Sith! It had lightsaber duels and space battles, Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor and Christopher Lee and Natalie Freakin Portman—everything my adolescent self could have wanted in a movie! I was ready to don my Jedi robes and bust out my surprisingly durable plastic lightsaber and head right over to Kukui Grove Cinema. [15]

Sadly, my parents said no, and though my buddy and I were both crestfallen, it definitely wasn’t worth the trouble I got myself into that day.

See, my parents couldn’t afford to give me money to pay for my ticket and snacks, and, as they didn’t want me to be a burden to my friend’s parents, the only real recourse was to forbid me from going, though at first, they did not explain why. When I pressed the issue at home they told me, and that should have been the end of it, but, though I thought I understood, I was young, and I really wanted to go to the movie, and, most importantly—and I cannot stress this enough—I was an idiot. And so it was that later that day when my friend called to see if he could affect a last-minute change of heart, I openly and honestly (and foolishly) admitted the truth: that my parents didn’t have the money to pay for it.

“Oh,” replied my friend. “Try wait.” A minute later he told me that his mom was calling mine, and that they would be picking me up for the movie shortly. I went to see my mom to give her the good news, but she was just getting off the phone with his mother. I was delighted; my mom, on the other hand, was…not so happy. The scolding I got that day stayed with me for the rest of my life. It ended in tears for both my mother and I, and I did not go to see Star Wars, but the most important takeaway was the lesson I learned that day: 

Don’t ever, ever, ever shame yourself or the family like that again.

Looking back now, it’s obvious why a parent wouldn’t want their child telling their friends they couldn’t afford the price of a movie ticket, especially when that prompted said friend’s parents to offer to pay instead. I don’t blame my mother for her reaction—honestly, I still cringe whenever I think about my lack of discretion that day—but her response was visceral, and it was one of many similar (though usually much more subtle) learning experiences I went through that conditioned me to make all my decisions with care, because it was not just my reputation on the line. And, if we want to zoom out a bit, I should probably mention that in the original draft of this essay, I eschewed the personal story above, because I didn’t want to shame my family (or myself) by sharing it, thus inadvertently proving the point.

Koof! Now that’s meta.

On Pidgin in Hawai‘i Hip Hop

When I first started rapping back in high school—Waimea High represent!—my music was actually pretty well-received by my classmates, friends, and family, even if many of them didn’t really “get it.” To be fair, I was a 15-year-old mustachioed kid calling himself the Illtalian while rapping about societal corruption, my doubts about my Christian faith, and the death of loved ones, so, you know, I was wasn’t exactly to “get.”

Even then, despite my quirkiness, most people were supportive. And yet, though I wasn’t exactly rapping about light stuff to begin with, the moment I started to delve deeper into my personal life, sharing my struggles with anxiety and depression and my loving but often volatile and combative relationship with my family, I started to get some serious pushback, not just from family members, but even from friends who felt that I was bringing shame on myself and my ‘ohana by discussing such touchy and personal issues in the public eye.

It took a lot of willpower on my part not to cave in to their pressure, because it went against my whole upbringing to consciously and repeatedly buck the norm, to not just stand out but to actively go against the group. And yet it was that very decision to discuss mental health and family dynamics in my music that brought much healing to both myself and my family, as it brought up wounds and trauma that none of us had the ability (or the courage) to talk about face to face.

Even now, whenever I tackle a sensitive issue in my music, whether personal or otherwise (such as, lately, anything regarding social issues in Hawai‘i specifically) I tend to get a fair bit of pushback from well-meaning but, I believe, misguided people who think the shame I risk bringing on myself or others is not worth the potential for change these songs might bring. 

I know from discussions with other Local emcees that I’m not the only one to face this kind of pushback with our music, and so it isn’t too surprising to see how Pidgin might fall through the cracks when faced with this sort of reaction. After all, going back to my “shame functions as an autopilot for many Locals” analogy, it’s like someone trying to save a plane that is rapidly losing altitude; wouldn’t it make sense for many of us—more specifically, those who are lucky enough to be able to code switch—to jettison any excess baggage that might potentially drag us down? And what would be more logical to toss than Pidgin in any setting in which it is not considered “appropriate” (which is almost everywhere, these days), so that we can avoid embarrassing ourselves with our funny way of talking?

And believe me, it is funny: just look at the way the typical “Local yokel” stereotype has been portrayed by our own Hawai‘i comedians. 

And what role models do we have in the mainstream being smart and articulate while also speaking Pidgin? Rob Schneider’s Ula in Fifty First Dates sure never made me proud of the way I talk. In fact, he never even bothered to actually learn Pidgin for the movies! Compare that to the way actors tend to gain recognition and praise for perfecting Local accents or dialects in films—why was Pidgin the exception?

And speaking of exceptions, though there are always a few who defy the trend, in general, the higher you go in terms of prestige, money, and power, the less you see Pidgin being spoken in our society. Most of our college professors don’t speak Pidgin in the classroom, most of our politicians don’t speak Pidgin on campaign, and most of our celebrities—te ones who really go mainstream, anyway, like Bruno Mars, or the Rock, or Jason Momoa, or even Obama—never speak it at all. 

Sure, many of our writers do their best to portray Pidgin more positively in their books, but let’s be honest: as painful as it is to say it, most Local people don’t read these days. Pidgin isn’t considered appropriate for formal events, for academia, for most kinds of writing, for business meetings, for many tourist-facing industries, and a fair number of churches frown on it, too. So why, then, should it be considered appropriate for rapping?

I mean, think about it: Hip hop is already incredibly foreign to us here in Hawai‘i, being the product of young, urban, Black and Puerto Rican kids from New York that eventually took over the world. And Hawai‘i, despite Honolulu’s ever-growing population, is not truly urban (at least not yet—there is too much island influence), and the vast majority of us, rappers or otherwise, aren’t Black or Puerto Rican. There are cultural, racial, and geographical divides that I think any Local person would notice right away if they dipped their toes into the mainstream hip-hop world, not just those of us who rap. We don’t look or live like the people we want to be like, so instead we emulate them, dressing like them, copying their hairstyles and outfits, and, naturally, talking like them, too. 

Now, to be fair, many other peoples have successfully assimilated hip hop into their own respective cultures, but I don’t know how many of them have to deal with the double portion of shame we struggle with as a result of the Asian and Pacific Islander influence on Hawai‘i. It seems to me that we Locals often don’t really like ourselves all that much, and that is especially true when it comes to our own language. If you seek further evidence of this phenomenon, of Local people’s internal sense of self-loathing and Pidgin’s resulting orphan status within Hawai‘i more generally, look no further than this very paper. I set out from the beginning to write on the topic of Pidgin, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to write in Pidgin, my own mother tongue.

Of course, there are a myriad of other reasons why I chose not to write this piece in Pidgin that I think can just as easily apply to why we Hawai‘i rappers tend to shy away from putting anything but the lightest dusting of Pidgin into our raps. For example, though I can’t speak for all of us, I for one am not used to using Pidgin in such a fashion, so it would have taken a lot more time and effort to write this whole essay in Pidgin, and even then, I’d still be worried it would come off as awkward.

I was also concerned about its accessibility, as from the beginning I intended to get this piece published, and so I worried, like I have often done when writing my raps, that using Pidgin would make it seem too obscure and kill any “crossover appeal” it might have otherwise had. The fact is, it’s much easier to sprinkle in the occasional Pidgin word or phrase to give it that “Local” feel than it is to actually write it all in Pidgin—and so that’s what I’ve done. Throughout this essay, I’ve thrown in a Pidgin phrase here and there, but I haven’t committed all the way. Frankly, it’s far less of a risk, both practically and artistically, to shy away from completely embracing Pidgin in any sort of medium. And yet, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth it.

So, even though it’s probably too little, too late, let me give it a shot:

to be hones, i neva tot i would write one paper in Pidgin lidis. or should i say pepah. or peppa? but does dat look more like peppa, like chili peppa watah kine peppa? i dunno, as hard fo say, cuz Pidgin no mo really one standardized way fo write tingz—altho Local people goin know if you get um wrong, n i garantee dey goin let you know if you get um wrong, too! n das another (anodda?) big part of da problem wit rapping in Pidgin: i tink we smallkine scared fo try, cuz wat if we get um wrong? wat if da Pidgin i use is da kine you dunno? 

we all grew up on different islands ah, n in different generations, so sometimes we no even speak da same Pidgin. or wat if he no sound right, n you make fun of me n i come all shame? or wat if da mainland people no really undastand, n i get rejected, das shame too ah? i dunno, seems like get plenny risk fo little bit reward…but dat no mean as not worth trying. so. dis is me trying. iI trying fo write mo raps in Pidgin. n i goin try write mo prose in Pidgin too, both essays n fiction n wateva else i tink of. maybe he goin be smallkine junk n awkward at first, but garantee goin get mo bettah bumbai. 

so yeah. sorry ah if dis is one cabbage way fo end my pepa (peppa? pepah?? peppah???), but, you kno wat, i goin stick wit um anyway. cuz even if i come little bit shame, da funny ting is, i no really hate myself quite so much right now.

Footnotes

[1] Tonouchi, Lee. "Hidden Pidgin: Da Absence of Pidgin in Hawai‘i Hip-Hop." Paper presented at the Association for Asian American Studies Conference, Honolulu, April 22, 2009, panel chaired by Tonouchi, titled “Try Hold da Pidgin: Is Pidgin being Presshah-ed Out from Hawai‘i Local Identity?”

[2] Stinton, E. 2020. “The Untold Story of How Hip-Hop Went to Hawai‘i, and How Hawai‘i Went Hip-Hop.” May 1, 2020. https://www.passionweiss.com/2020/06/16/the-untold-story-of-how-hip-hop-went-to-Hawai‘i-and-how-Hawai‘i-went-hip-hop/.

[3] Nā Mele Paleoleo.” n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nā_mele_paleoleo#cite_note-SuddenRush-1.

[4] Tonouchi. Hidden Pidgin. 12.

[5] Ibid, 14.

[6] In private discussions with Lee, the one other major area we noticed where Pidgin tends to consistently pop up in Hawai‘i Hip Hop is in songs that are either angry, frustrated, or otherwise aggressive in nature. This is a subject that needs more analysis than I am able to give in this essay, but I do plan to revisit it bumbai.

[7] Acupan, J. J. Iannucci T. A. 2020. “Change the World.” Song. In. Kaua’i, HI: DJ Jus Jay Music/Ends of the Earth Productions.

[8] Lindsay, Robert. "Intelligibility Figures for Spanish Versus Other Romance Languages." Unpublished paper. Accessed via Scribd.com.

[9] Tonouchi. Hidden Pidgin. 15.

[10] Shout out to Eric Stinton, Hawai‘i’s resident Hip Hop Journalist, for doing this better than most.

[11] I would like to point out that this well-meaning and practical advice is not bad in and of itself, but I think the reasoning behind it betrays the deeper issue I’m trying to get at: Locals should be able to code switch because speaking English fluently is a useful skill to have, not because Pidgin itself is somehow inappropriate to speak.

[12] "Socialization Practices Regarding Shame in Japanese Caregiver-Child Interactions," *Frontiers in Psychology*, published July 11, 2019, accessed March 7, 2024, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6638065/.

[13] Amelia Rachel Hokule’a Borofsky, “In Some Cultures, a Role for Shame in Addressing Obesity?,” The Atlantic, February 15, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/in-some-cultures-a-role-for-shame-in-addressing-obesity/272999/.

[14] Or, “出る杭は打たれる/deru kugi wa utareru” in the original Japanese.

[15] RIP

---

Image by Erin Song.