One concept I really noticed in 13 Ways of Looking at TheBus is that Gajelonia really portrays tourists negatively. In one poem, AllBusiness, she discusses the consumerism that comes with tourism. The replacing of local shops with Nordstrom, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus – the assumption that comes with those stores; the assumption that locals can afford to shop there. She comments that “we no can afford da kine stores they get. Dass why only haoles and Japanee shop there, ‘caue they get money. But us, we lucky if we have enough to buy 5 bags of rice at Costco – ” (Gajelonia 10). Because of the tourism in Hawaii, those department stores try to profit from it. They don’t care if they’re displacing local stores and putting locals out of business – in fact, I bet that they would claim that they actually provide the locals with a lot of jobs. I bet that those stores claim that they help bolster Hawaii’s economy. The problem is addressed by Gajelonia. She describes the hiring of locals and the firing of them. She says that “Cannot just throw people lidat, know what I mean?” (Gajelonia 10). It gives the idea that those department stores hire locals to make themselves look good, to provide a sort of idealized image for the tourists who come and pay to buy goods in the department store. Because nothing is more convincing than a local person working behind the counter, really making the tourist feel like they’re in Hawaii…even if they are in a fancy department store that you can find in any mainland city. Gajelonia doesn’t understand the greed that comes from the department stores. She doesn’t understand why they’re in Hawaii because they aren’t needed; Gajelonia channels the inability to understand the purpose of the department stores into this poem. It is just one comment in a sea of comments regarding tourists.

-- Tanya Tsoi