After reading Hawaii's Story By Hawaii's Queen, I was unsure of how I felt towards Liluokalani. I think the best way to describe my impression of her is to say that I have a love hate relationship. There were several passages where I did a mental applause for Liluokalani and was genuinely impressed by her commitment to her people, her keen awareness of the situation at hand, and her drive for the preservation of Hawaii. For example, Chapter XLI (and more specifically pg. 257) Liliokalani gives a detailed report of the government take over and all the trickery that was underway.
"Where was proper consideration given to my own statement to President Harrison...? Why were not the petitions of the patriotic leagues of my people put into the inquiry? Why was not the fact that there was such an inquiry going on communicated to me? Why were my enemies informed of that which was in progress, so that they could hurry to Washington, or send their testimony, while not one of my friends was given the opportunity to raise a voice in behalf of the disfranchised Hawaiian people or their persecuted queen?"
Moments like the passage above made me love Lilokalani. I felt that she really had her wits about her and she stood upon strong moral grounds to fight against the invading United States. The autobiography actually reminded me of a lot of a love letter to her fellow Native Hawaiian and the land and, for this, I truly admired her.
So what did I hate? I hated the way she went about presenting everything. I know that in discussion we talked about her straight forward writing style being a tool she utilized for presenting historical facts and the great influence her childhood teachings at the Royal School had on her mannerism, but even with these taken into consideration I found myself annoyed! Maybe my dislike stemmed more from her writing style then her actual self but I felt that she painted herself as a victim or hero (depending on the situation) far too often. For example, when she is thrown from the carriage and gets injured the rest of the chapter is dedicated to her trying to be strong through this almost instant death. It just felt over done.
I looked up some of her songs and read over the lyrics and THAT is the Liliuokalani I wished I could have read from! A lot of her songs are about love and nature, the beauty of Hawaii and, most importantly, they're filled with passion. The writing style here is beautiful and poetic and for many of the songs she was the direct translator for the English versions. So where did that passionate writing style go in her autobiography? I understand that this is an autobiography and that she can't necessarily be as poetic as her songs, but the gap between her artsy self and her very removed manner of writing her book seemed, to me, like too big of an extreme.
-Vanessa Arredondo
Vanessa -
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. The biggest difference in her writing styles I would attribute to her audience and the situation in which she is producing as an artist. This was very much a piece of propaganda, a political weapon she was using to advance the cause of reclaiming Hawaiian sovereignty in the court of American public opinion, and was written under the duress of an ongoing annexation process. Not exactly the conditions that are conducive for a flowing form of creative writing... but I'm glad you checked out her other writings and songs to get a better feel for her (true) voice.
- Trey