Saturday Night Review

Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater is my favorite reading in the course so far. All of the material is so raw that I cannot put it down. Lois-Ann Yamanaka captivates the reader with the overwhelming amount of truth. The point of view is one of my favorite parts of the book because I feel like the perspective puts the reader right in the middle of the stories, experiencing the events with the narrator. I enjoy that the language is entirely in Pidgin because it makes the different accounts seem more genuine and gives another dimension of reality to the story. The greatest part of this book, in my opinion, is that it is one hundred percent poetry, rather than a straightforward story. This gives the narrator the chance to change between tones and topics easily in such a beautiful way. Although the narrator grounds people into reality with the plots, the poetic flow of the story suspends reality and injects the emotion into the minds of the reader. I really enjoyed this reading and hope to find more books written by Yamanaka.

Tita

Like some of my classmates, Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre really surprised me. I hadn’t expected reading her poems to feel like a punch in the gut. Yamanaka’s style is very in your face. She doesn’t shy away from topics that make the reader uncomfortable; for instance, I felt like there was a lot of commentary about race within her works. In particular, I noted that there were a lot of comments about not just being an Asian-American woman in Hawaii, but rather, being a woman in general.

One poem that really stood out to me was “Tita: Japs,” which by the title, already sort of threw me off considering “Jap” is used as a derogatory term. I couldn’t understand why she would choose such a title for this piece considering that she is a Japanese-American. But once I started reading, I really got pulled into the poem.

There were so many times that I could relate to this work, especially the parts about westernization and how what is considered beautiful is this westernized image of white faces and large eyes with double eyelids. Right now across Asia, the big fad in the plastic surgery industry is double-eyelid surgery. It’s so common that it’s not even really regarded as anything significant. People aren’t shocked to find classmates with bruised or bandaged eyes. The way that Tita phrases this, “I tell you, my next birtday / when my madda ask me what I like, / I going tell her I like go Honolulu/ for get one double eye operation. / I no care if all bruise” (Yamanaka 33). With this, I really felt like Yamanaka was commenting on the pressure to be beautiful that not just Asian-American feel, but all women. That we all feel this pressure to conform to society’s standard of beauty. That we must subjugate ourselves to eyelid glue or tape (which, from experience, I can tell you is highly unpleasant) in order to feel beautiful.

Yamanaka also continues her comments with the constant mention of make-up and buying make up or who has what sort of make-up. These girls are so obsessed with these American beauty products and with being beautiful that that’s all they can talk about. And considering that Yamanaka usually writes about young, middle-school aged girls, this is particularly interesting. Middle school is when girls are starting to play with things like make up and concepts like beauty. It’s when we’re most susceptible to influences about beauty or our own image of ourselves.  With Tita’s brazen, rude, arrogant voice flowing through the poem – it brings me back to memories of my own middle school days and feeling that pressure from not just my fellow peers, but society.

Her characters’ voices are so distinct and the pidgin and manner of which they speak really add volumes to what she’s trying to say. With Tita, she’s trying to make a comment about how ridiculous this all is. She’s trying to get across this feeling that well, these really young girls are starting to understand themselves and their bodies and how they feel about those things. I think her characters are really good at making us feel uncomfortable about these nonchalant talks about make up and self-images; it feels as though we are privy to those conversations…the real conversations that actually happen in today’s schools.

-- Tanya Tsoi

Lambie the Kid

In the poetic novella, Kid, Bernie goes goat hunting and mistakenly shoots a female goat that had a baby. The baby was too young to survive without its mother’s milk, so Bernie decides to give Lucy the responsibility of nursing it with Carnation milk until it’s old enough to eat grass. The baby goat is a symbol for Lucy. She wants to name the goat Lambie like a baby sheep, but Bernie corrects her by telling her that baby goats are called “kids.” Lucy insists on calling her Lambie because she is still unsure about her own identity.

By nursing Lambie, Lucy grows fond of her. She favors Lambie’s unique smell and looks forward to feeding her everyday. In contrast to Lucy’s mother kicking her out, when Lambie grows old enough to eat grass, she accepts Lambie into her home. Lambie eats her mother’s wild violets and Lucy is forced to release Lambie to the Onekahakaha Zoo in Hilo. Lambie is too tame to be released into the wild. Male goats are called “billies” and it is indicated at the end of the poem that Lambie is a girl. Lucy identifies with Lambie the most when the “big billies” surround her inside the cage and she has nobody to protect her. At this point Lucy pleads for Bernie to help Lambie and admits for the first time that Lambie is just a “kid.” The word “kid” has two meanings in this poem; one as a baby goat and one as a child. Lucy’s experience as a helpless kid being surrounded by older boys who only want to take advantage of her is relived through Lambie.

- Francis Miguelino

Pahala_Anti personal growth and personal manifestation (Jackie)

Pahala is a place where female personal growth and self worth is very difficult to develop. Whether it is the mother or family member reprimanding a growing woman or a school companion, the narrator which we later find out is Lucy, doesn't get the opportunity to fully express what she feels and there isn't anyone who is willing to sit down and ask her about her uncertainties and reassure her. In the short poem Haupu Mountain, it broke my heart when her mother kicked her out of her house and left her to fend for herself. I am finding it very difficult not to judge her but how can she do that to her own child who has done nothing wrong except try to make the best of her remaining days as a child. As the narrator quickly enters womanhood there are so many things happening within her body and in her external world as well. She is in real need to a woman role model to teach her the proper lesson of a period and how to be careful of sexual predators not a made up story used to scare little girls about the creepy man next door. Anyway, in the poem Haupu Mountain, although it was horrible that her mother, the person who brought her into this world and the one that is morally obliged to care and love her child, kick her out of not only the house but out of her life as well. If I were in the narrator's shoes I would feel so alone in the world and terrified. Luckily, the narrator has Bernie, the only man in her life who has the purest intentions with her. After reading the poem Kala:Grad Party where the narrator is raped I feel that every other man in the novella is bound to do the same so it was a lovely surprise that Bernie was different from say Jimmy. Bernie takes her hiking up to Haupu Mountain and has her sit on the grass and relax and enjoy the scenery as a way of keeping her mind off of what she just went through. I took the part where Bernie tells her "There my house, he say. There the shop. Over there the Catholic church. Where your house?     There.     Way over there," as if to tell her that her problems are physically so far away from her now that everything is okay. I really enjoyed that heartwarming moment because Bernie reassures in a subtle way and he let everything sink in in her mind. This poem made me feel hopeful for the narrator, that she has at least one good person in her life.

Ouch.

Kala: Captain of the Volleyball Team

     Here are the notes I had made for the class discussion last tuesday. They don't address the whole of the poem, I sort of fizzle out towards the end, but they do address the issues, cursory though this address may be, I was hoping to.

     As though we are entering the poem as it is being told to someone else, it begins with, “Then he tell me, When you going kiss me?” The reader enters into the poem as though being privy to a candid dialogue. This is not a story told to the audiance as told to the audience but as told to someone else, it is not structured by the speaker for us. By the poet, yes, but that is another matter. The other part of understanding the tone is that it exists in a series. We talked about the eventual rape that ends this series in our last class.

     The speaker goes on to say that they were standing by the portables. I am thinking that these are either portable classrooms, as in trailer class rooms, or porta-potties. Either way, what is certain is that they are cheap pre-fabricated structures useful to people who do not have the wealth to build the substantial structures needed. 

     They are having this interaction near these buildings either because this setting purposely suggests the “artificial”, external and temporary forces that seem to invasively invest the moment with the simulation of meaning, or! or, because the forces that lead to there being portables are simply also the forces that have shaped the potentials Jimmy Boy is capable of acting out. 

     The portables are not from the place where they are, they are not what they seem but mimic substantial buildings, and they are not permanent. Likewise, Jimmy Boy is invading the space of the Kala, although to some degree is welcome in this because Jimmy Boy is similar to the substantiality actually wanted (insubstantial), and Jimmy is not acting out a potential which dignifies the place of his origin but is some sad mimicry of it--his misogynistic arrogance a telling echo of the dignity lost before his time, so the (artificial)--and augmented by imported elements of culture (not from here). He watches porn. Films of haole women being sexualized.

The poem goes on, “The other hand start rubbing my ass part / and I trying pull away / but he pull me closer to him.” This is not consensual. This is not love. This is not dignified. This is a person reduced to a hunger which reduces all others to its food. Jimmy Boy’s advances are coercive when not outright forceful. “When you gonna kiss me? he asks again. / C’mon, I like kiss you. What.” 

This latent rape scene is interrupted by a teacher shining a flashlight on the two. Mr. Shimayama, who does not intervene much. Instead, there is a terribly embarrassing interaction wherein Jimmy Boy crudely sexualizes Kala in front of the teacher. Mr. Shimayama says, “Be good, eh, Jimmy boy.” and laughs, “one funny kine laugh”. Kala is not the only one uncomfortable, but Shimayama’s discomfort is more a guilty and shamefully complicit awareness of the missing dignity.

     This scene is a shame to all members in the community that care about it as a community. This is the vagary of a society destitute of power, not even confident enough to stop that which destroys one of its most primordially cohesive elements, not confident enough to stop what would destroy amorous togetherness, not confident enough to stop rape. There is no self-respect for the self is a construct only possible by togetherness, by community, and as a destroyer of community Jimmy is destroying himself. Likewise, the teacher does not care enough about himself to stop the situation. At most he tries to instruct. This is what it is to be a teacher there, ashamed and embarrassed for the base degradation, and trying to change this, but insignificantly powerful. 

Once she gets home she is abused by her uncle. All of the male bodied people in this poem are disempowered, and two of them (and in a way three) attempt to compensate for that weakness by physically overpowering the female bodied person. From the later poems we know that Kala will eventually be raped by Jimmy boy.

     These properties of being disempowered, of being hungry, of being violated, of being ashamed, of not belonging in your own home, of being portable, these are qualities of colonial trauma. They are played out across the bodies of the community: the rape, the hunger. They constitute the nature of the available potential: the portables, the imitations. They are fragmented, seen in the lack of successful communication between the members of the community, of being seen as a resource rather than a person--as in labor, or labor as the sexualization of the female body, or the sexualization of the female body itself, these are all ways of not seeing the community as people by only recognizing parts of their being.

     I know this poetic novella was an emotionally difficult read for some of us, myself included, and I keep thinking to myself: I like being happy, and I also like remembering stories like these so that I have the emotional impetus to step into situations and be like Bernie (Patient, safe, thoughtful). That the two, happiness and being like Bernie, seem opposed in my mind is not totally correct. Being like Bernie and being happy are inextricable for me--that happiness is only possible with that accompanying empathy. Ouch, you know what I mean? I mean life.

-Joseph Watkins

If Momma Aint Happy

 Lois-Ann Yamanaka captures the complexity of a family in section Two of Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, specifically in “Parts”. This series of short poems, named for different body parts, capture both the humor as well as the raw and perhaps disturbing aspects of this family.

            In THE NOSTRIL we encounter the more humorous side, in a scolding of a child caught picking their nose as we read:

                        What I told you

                        about digging your nose?

                        who taught you that?

In part the humor lies in the universality of this problem – anyone who has spent time with kids knows that their fingers seem to have a magnetic attraction to their nostrils. But as we read on we see the disciplinary aspect to this “digging” as our narrator states:

                        You going get

                        two slaps

                        I ever see you

                        doing that

                        in public again.

The dynamic is only enhanced in this poem by Yamanaka’s use of pidgin – which lends itself to oral recitation – and we can easily imagine this scolding recited lively and full of frustration at the booger-picking child. From THE NOSTRIL alone we can tell that in this family “if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”, or to put more succinctly – what the mother says, goes. End of story.

Sarah Eastland 

                                     

The Pahala Theater of Abuse

Saturday Night At The Pahala Theater by Lois-Ann Yamanka took me completely off guard. The pretty cover art, imagery of going to the movies, and being told it consisted of short poems had me thinking I was in for a pleasant read. How wrong I was! The writing style of Yamanka is like nothing I’ve experienced before. I was left feeling physically abused and emotionally traumatized after each story. However, I completely commend Yamanka for creating poetry that goes deeper than the light romanticized images that I, personally, associate with many poems. For each part of the poetic novella, Yamanka is able to pull the reader into a different mindset and allows us to experience the world through various lenses. The insight forms a bond between the reader and the character. This connection is why I felt so abused after each reading. With every horrific experience, I was left feeling like a victim to the same experiences. Reading Kala’s excerpts about the complete lack of parental protection, rape, abuse, and male domination, I wanted to scream for help. After reading Tita’s verbal abuse to the third party character, I felt the pain of her words as if they were said directly to me. Reading into Part Two of the novel left me feeling so utterly hopeless. “Tongues” and “Parts” were horrific tales of innocence lost and a level of hostility beyond anything I’ve encountered. I began questioning where the source of such tales could come from. Surely the sweet looking woman in the “About The Author” section is not the same person to write such things!

And then Part Three/Four happened. Even though Part Three and Four were not completely without their malicious twists and turns, I found that some of the innocence I had been grasping for was found in these sections. Yamanka develops these parts to bring back some of the humanity lost in the previous parts. The development of Bernie and the third party character’s relationship and WillyJoe and Lucy’s relationship demonstrates how some of the characters learned to tackle the abusive world Yamanaka has portrayed. With these relationships, Yamanka was able to offer as close to a happy ending as she was ever going to give. 

 The Pahala Theater, Pahala, Hawaii: Photo by Donnie MacGowan

-Vanessa Arredondo

Relationship between speaker and reader

I found an interesting connection between the speakers in "Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater" and the reader who was forced to confront certain vulgar and uncomfortable aspects of these girls lives. It takes a while for the reader to make sense of who Kala, Tita, Girlie and Lucy are talking to when the word "you" is presented, and we are left to assume they are either talking to each other, to Lucy, or even directly to the audience. By dragging the reader into this narrative, the speakers are creating a relationship not normally found in society. These embarrassing, lewd, and aggressive moments shock the reader and cause feelings of  confusion, and even distress as we learn about abusive moments young girls had gone through. The writer brings up questions in the readers mind about whether these are confessions or secrets the speakers haven't shared with people in their lives. By observing the truth about a stranger, readers are confronted with thoughts of their own secrets hidden away from sight, and begin to sort through traumatizing or embarrassing childhood  moments. This allows the books presence to linger in the thoughts its audience.

On page 41, the writer pauses from her use of pidgin in order to show the contrast between Tita's usual speech and the way she speaks and presents herself to boys. Tita states that "You cannot let boys know your true self," and allows the reader to see the difference between how she acts around her friends and how she must portray herself in society in order to appear hapa, or racially mixed between Asian and Pacific Islander. This is interesting advice coming from the speaker, because it contradicts her association with displaying her "true self" in these poems. The reader can sort through her thoughts, habits, and provocations in order to form their own opinions about the speakers.

-Jessica St.Martin

                 The poem Yarn Wig by Louis-Ann Yamanaka was a very interesting in terms of family relations particularly the three sisters. The mother-daughters relationships taking a different twist in this selected piece due to its unique execution of what it must have been like for these young girls to be in a sense transformed by their mother. The mother playing this dominant role in their life setting them up to feel a bit insecure due their physical appearance. "My madda cut our hair so short. Shit, us look like boys, I no joke you" (Louis-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, 83). Here we have three sisters being taken away from their feminine identity because their mother doesn't feel the need to spend quality time on their grooming. She wants to take the easy way out by cutting their hair short, saving her from wasting time on their daily grooming. For the mother it sort of works out, but the girls feel self-estranged. Although later on the mother tries to cover up her mistake by creating a wig as an alternative the girls already faced the bullying from their fellow schoolmates. Here I feel the only reason the mother really made these wigs for her daughters were to save them from humiliation, but not because she truly knew she had made a mistake. Interestingly, two out of the three sisters really liked their new-wigs whereas the third sister couldn't bear to leave on this false new-do. This resulting in her breaking away from the social norms despite the bullying that follows. She separating herself from the social expectations, remaining an outcast as she had stated herself, "I pull my bangs real hard with both hands and start feeling real bolohead" (Louis-Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, 85). The character of this particular individual stood out to me, simply because she was bold enough to be herself regardless of what society expectations may have been.
-Puja C. Patel-

Mid-Term Review

... is here

If this doesn't get you pumped to study, nothing will.

Lecture Notes - Week 5

Updated lecture notes

Gary Pak's "Valley..."

In this short story Pak uses a few metaphors that can be interpreted in various ways. One such metaphor occurs on page 38 of the reader: "But something bad was in the soil. When Tats and the other sweet potato farmers began harvesting their produce...they found abnormally small sweet potatoes, some having the peculiar shape of a penis." Professor Wilson touched on this briefly during lecture, stating something along the lines of the sweet potatoes' shape being a physical "manifestation" of old Jacob's "mana." While reading this story, I noticed a few details that led me to interpret the metaphor slightly differently. I noticed that the land that all of the townspeople farm used to belong to old Jacob's family, and that it was taken away from them unwillingly by rich foreigners. I then noticed that most of the names of the townspeople did not seem to be Hawaiin names (judging strictly by what I have read in relation to this course). Though Professor Wilson did not believe that the names were good indicators of ethnicity or race, I felt that they were too obvious to be discounted as racial/ethnic indicators. Otherwise, what purpose would the names be serving? These details led me to read the "penis potato" metaphor as such: The act of planting crops in land that was not given or sold to them by the previous rightful owner makes the townspeople rapists. They would not be rapists in the literal sense of course, but by forcing the land to submit to their needs without the consent of the previous rightful owner they have effectively "raped" the land. If we also acknowledge the names of the townspeople as true indications of foreign decent, then the "rape" motiff would be enacted by foreign "invaders" against native Hawaiian land.

Brandon Lovette

The Surreal Language Used In Minister Steven’s Correspondences as seen in President Cleveland’s "Message Relating to The Hawaiian Islands"

 It seems quite curious that after reading the incredibly detailed account by President Cleveland that the American theft of the Hawaiian Islands was not overturned by either Congress, the “Hon. James H. Blount”, or due to outrage from the American public (Reader 28).  Of course, there was no Internet, or Twitter, or any instant information dissemination system, so the truth about the unfortunate state of affairs that Queen Liliuokalani and Hawaiian nation faced could not be relayed to the American public, or the rest of the world.  However, the following quotes, from correspondences by Minister Stevens, raise some major flags regarding the blatantly unjust “annexation” of the Hawaiian Islands, via the establishment of the “Provisional Government,” the seem to be sufficient evidence for either Congress or James H. Blount to reinstate the Hawaiian Monarchy:

·      Steven’s candidly details “one of two courses seems to me absolutely necessary to be followed, either by bold and vigorous measures for annexation or a ‘custom union’” (29).  It is quite curious that the actual takeover is a hybrid of these two “courses,” where “upwards of 160” Navy soldiers and “two pieces of artillery” were used to establish a “custom union” (29, 30)

·      While this previous statement might be described as a mere opinion regarding the two ways in which a successful takeover of the Hawaiian could take place, Stevens goes on to reveal that he “can not refrain from expressing the opinion with emphasis that the golden hour is near at hand” and that “the Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it” (29).  These two quotes deliberately point towards an intentional overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by the American presence on the Islands.

·      As to the ways that American government and military officials deploy a “custom union,” Minister Stevens asks his correspondent “how far the present Minister [i.e. himself] and naval commanders may deviate from established international rules and precedents” in order to ensure the American annexation of the Hawaiian Islands (29).  Again, this statement clearly declares intent towards an intentional overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy.

All of these statements point directly towards a “vigorous…[establishment of a] ‘custom union’” on the Hawaiian Islands (29).  And in President Cleveland’s opinion all the evidence in his address, including the quotes from Minister Steven’s correspondences, “require that the [Provisional Government] should be buried, and that the [Hawaiian Monarchy] should reassume its authority as if its continuity had not been interrupted” (33).  It is an absolute shame that either James H. Blount or Congress did not come to the same conclusion.

-Michael Kell