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California World History Library
Island World: A History of Hawai'i and the United States
Brilliantly mixing geology, folklore, music, cultural commentary, and history, Gary Y. Okihiro overturns the customary narrative in which the United States acts upon and dominates Hawai'i. Instead, Island World depicts the islands' press against the continent, endowing America's story with fresh meaning. Okihiro's reconsidered history reveals Hawaiians fighting in the Civil War, sailing on nineteenth-century New England ships, and living in pre-gold rush California. He points to Hawai'i's lingering effect on twentieth-century American culture―from surfboards, hula, sports, and films, to art, imagination, and racial perspectives―even as the islands themselves succumb slowly to the continental United States. In placing Hawai'i at the center of the national story, Island World rejects the premise that continents comprise "natural" states while islands are "tiny spaces," without significance, to be acted upon by continents. An astonishingly compact tour de force, this book not only revises the way we think about islands, oceans, and continents, it also recasts the way we write about space and time.
326 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 6, 2009
This book blew apart the grasp I thought I had on Hawaii's history and history in general. Mind you, this is not a history book, it's a long night of talking story over beers until the sun starts to come back up. Okihiro follows themes, thoughts, and their interconnections across space and time naturally as you would in such a conversation. Significantly, Okihiro turns on its head the usual perspective of Hawaii, that of the islands being acted upon by any number of agents, to the view of Hawaii and its sons and daughters as acting upon the U.S. and world. As Okihiro points out in the second paragraph of the book,
"It is a matter of perspective, according to some Polynesian navigators. Mau Piailug, a master navigator, referenced a star compass in his head... Piailug plotted his progress in relation to a 'reference island,' which sat well out of sight over the horizon... His object was to keep his canoe stationary as the imaginary reference island moved from the bearing of one horizon star to another until the island had moved past all the horizon stars, marking the completion of the journey... In his world, thus, islands move and canoes reach their destinations by holding steady."
Okihiro avoids both the reactionary or apologetic dogma pitfalls so prevalent in navigating through Hawaii's loaded history. The reader can then learn things that I have not found anywhere else as accessible or digestible. Hawaiians, both indigenous and children of foreign transplants, fought in blue Union uniforms, served in British and American navies during the War of 1812, built and supplied the Hudson Bay Company's wildly lucrative trading posts in the Pacific Northwest, walked the streets of China in malo and feather cape, married native Californians and were put in reservations, became New England missionary projects and poster children, enticed a fledgling Hollywood with their exoticism and otherness, served as subjects to missionary educational experiments which would become the model for "civilizing" freed slaves and American Indians, and left a huge mark on early 20th century American music and its notable offspring such as blues and country.
What strikes me is how our social attitudes really are not so far removed from the seemingly distant past. In 1832, missionary Clarissa Chapman Armstrong lamented, "Week after week passes and we see none but naked, filthy, wicked heathens with souls as dark as the tabernacles which they inhabit. The darkness of the people seems to destroy the beauty of the scenery around us." And just last week, to string together a couple of the same Honolulu Advertiser reader's comments on native Hawaiians opposing the state's proposed sale of ceded lands, "[Native Hawaiians:] need more land for tarps and rusted cars and chained pit bulls... I just hope they use different colored tarps to live on the land. They couldn't survive without the federal government welfare money. This truly is a disgusting place." The words may be different, but the message is the same: Native Hawaiians are dirty, immoral, and don't deserve this paradise which was clearly created for a higher race.
When a historian, or more precisely an over the edge outsider as Okihiro says he's been described, reveals the past in your morning paper, you know it's a successful book. I eagerly await the next two installments of this planned trilogy.
"It is a matter of perspective, according to some Polynesian navigators. Mau Piailug, a master navigator, referenced a star compass in his head... Piailug plotted his progress in relation to a 'reference island,' which sat well out of sight over the horizon... His object was to keep his canoe stationary as the imaginary reference island moved from the bearing of one horizon star to another until the island had moved past all the horizon stars, marking the completion of the journey... In his world, thus, islands move and canoes reach their destinations by holding steady."
Okihiro avoids both the reactionary or apologetic dogma pitfalls so prevalent in navigating through Hawaii's loaded history. The reader can then learn things that I have not found anywhere else as accessible or digestible. Hawaiians, both indigenous and children of foreign transplants, fought in blue Union uniforms, served in British and American navies during the War of 1812, built and supplied the Hudson Bay Company's wildly lucrative trading posts in the Pacific Northwest, walked the streets of China in malo and feather cape, married native Californians and were put in reservations, became New England missionary projects and poster children, enticed a fledgling Hollywood with their exoticism and otherness, served as subjects to missionary educational experiments which would become the model for "civilizing" freed slaves and American Indians, and left a huge mark on early 20th century American music and its notable offspring such as blues and country.
What strikes me is how our social attitudes really are not so far removed from the seemingly distant past. In 1832, missionary Clarissa Chapman Armstrong lamented, "Week after week passes and we see none but naked, filthy, wicked heathens with souls as dark as the tabernacles which they inhabit. The darkness of the people seems to destroy the beauty of the scenery around us." And just last week, to string together a couple of the same Honolulu Advertiser reader's comments on native Hawaiians opposing the state's proposed sale of ceded lands, "[Native Hawaiians:] need more land for tarps and rusted cars and chained pit bulls... I just hope they use different colored tarps to live on the land. They couldn't survive without the federal government welfare money. This truly is a disgusting place." The words may be different, but the message is the same: Native Hawaiians are dirty, immoral, and don't deserve this paradise which was clearly created for a higher race.
When a historian, or more precisely an over the edge outsider as Okihiro says he's been described, reveals the past in your morning paper, you know it's a successful book. I eagerly await the next two installments of this planned trilogy.
February 20, 2009
Eye opening, complex and readable. I dog-eared just about every page to go back and mull over again.
Major ideas: geography and history are fluid cultural concepts... Hawaii and Hawaiians have affected and changed the course of continental American history, through Hawaii-originating models of education for non-whites, through the whaling and cattle industries on the east and west coasts respectively, through emigration and intermarriage with Indians and African Americans, and through music.
Major ideas: geography and history are fluid cultural concepts... Hawaii and Hawaiians have affected and changed the course of continental American history, through Hawaii-originating models of education for non-whites, through the whaling and cattle industries on the east and west coasts respectively, through emigration and intermarriage with Indians and African Americans, and through music.
June 16, 2017
I loved the sections on Polynesian navigation methods, as well as the Hawaiian diaspora's participation in international trade, the war of 1812, and the American Civil War. I'd had no idea just how many people from different places were coming together on the whale boats, in the fur trade to China, and in the colonization of what are now the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.
At the same time, I don't think the text really bore out Okihiro's goal of bringing the Hawaiian Island from margin to center, both methodologically and in his content. I wholly agree with the argument that islands should not be treated as marginal in geography and history, and therefore I was disappointed not to see more material centered from the Hawaiians' own perspective. There's probably a dearth of primary sources, but I still think Okihiro could have tried harder. His main method seems to have been 'here's how this Hawaiian stuff influenced mainland stuff and became really ubiquitous, but the very nature of empire is to co-opt and incorporate pieces of native cultures divorced from their native meanings.
He talked about how terrible the conditions were in many of the trades Hawaiians participated in: whaling, guano mining, etc. So then why did so many Hawaiians flock to them in droves? A little more contextual grounding in the conditions of Hawaiian life on the islands would have been nice.
At the same time, I don't think the text really bore out Okihiro's goal of bringing the Hawaiian Island from margin to center, both methodologically and in his content. I wholly agree with the argument that islands should not be treated as marginal in geography and history, and therefore I was disappointed not to see more material centered from the Hawaiians' own perspective. There's probably a dearth of primary sources, but I still think Okihiro could have tried harder. His main method seems to have been 'here's how this Hawaiian stuff influenced mainland stuff and became really ubiquitous, but the very nature of empire is to co-opt and incorporate pieces of native cultures divorced from their native meanings.
He talked about how terrible the conditions were in many of the trades Hawaiians participated in: whaling, guano mining, etc. So then why did so many Hawaiians flock to them in droves? A little more contextual grounding in the conditions of Hawaiian life on the islands would have been nice.
November 26, 2024
Great book if interested on the impact of Hawaiian culture on U.S. and the world.
This book interweaves history in a way I've never read before. Author Okihiro takes a particular aspect of Hawaii, such as surfing, and traces its origins, its development in Hawaiian culture, its appropriation by mainland white Americans, its influences in media, etc. It's a much broader understanding of surfing (how it was) to surfing (what we understand it to be now).
I loved how Okihiro challenges the perspective of Hawaii as isolated solitary islands. He illustrates through geography, biology, and culture that Hawaiian islands are a crossroads between continents. Hawaiians have been influencing the U.S., religion, and global trade for a long time! I was particularly fascinated by the section on Hawaiian music and its influence within the blues, jazz, and country.
This book interweaves history in a way I've never read before. Author Okihiro takes a particular aspect of Hawaii, such as surfing, and traces its origins, its development in Hawaiian culture, its appropriation by mainland white Americans, its influences in media, etc. It's a much broader understanding of surfing (how it was) to surfing (what we understand it to be now).
I loved how Okihiro challenges the perspective of Hawaii as isolated solitary islands. He illustrates through geography, biology, and culture that Hawaiian islands are a crossroads between continents. Hawaiians have been influencing the U.S., religion, and global trade for a long time! I was particularly fascinated by the section on Hawaiian music and its influence within the blues, jazz, and country.
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January 23, 2025winter '25 - history 200d
June 8, 2023
While Okihiro's purported aim wishes to show Hawaiians have influenced many things in the mainland, his book comes across as a bad version of "peaceful savage," where Hawaiian motives are unquestioned and bad actions are ignored, unless they are traitors who wanted to bring in outside ideas. Europeans, in contrast, have their at-the-time motives ignored for uncharitable modern-day interpretations, Hawaiian partners considered shrewd instead of genuine, and are held accountable for second- and third-generations (who don't even live on the islands, which makes the book feel disjointed) who acted unjustly. This is best seen in the chapters on religion and education. Okihiro implicitly denied European descendents improved life for Hawaiians because he considered any difference a threat to the peaceful nation - despite the several wars fought between tribes and islands.
This is not to suggest a whitewashing of the interactions between Europeans and Hawaiians is preferred, but that a more-balanced approach would lend credence to the thesis. However, the thesis itself is weakened by the inclusion of minor actors as major contributors to their actions.
Overall there are interesting, new ideas that help the reader understand more about the Hawaiian diaspora and how they were treated in the world in general and the USA in particular.
This is not to suggest a whitewashing of the interactions between Europeans and Hawaiians is preferred, but that a more-balanced approach would lend credence to the thesis. However, the thesis itself is weakened by the inclusion of minor actors as major contributors to their actions.
Overall there are interesting, new ideas that help the reader understand more about the Hawaiian diaspora and how they were treated in the world in general and the USA in particular.
July 15, 2009
Okihiro's premise (that the Hawaiian islands acted upon and influenced the continental U.S., rather than being completely subjugated and dominated by continental culture), is a compelling one and forcefully argued through historical example. For example, even though I've read books about the Civil War and the whaling industry in Massachusetts, Hawaiian participation in those historical narratives was never considered or even mentioned. Okihiro's book brings these examples to the forefront along with some that, although perhaps predictable (e.g., surfing, music), were explored in depth with detail unfamiliar to this reader. I learned a lot from this well-written cultural history (the first in a planned trilogy).
March 10, 2012
Gorgeous work to re-situate me in Hawai`i and re-situate my thinking about Hawai`i. Okihiro moves ideas around as much as he suggests the reconstructing or revisioning of geographical constructs of time and space around Oceania.
My very basic initial thoughts have to do with the subject matter/characters who pop in and out:
--how many more Native Hawaiians or other ethnicities from Hawai`i were moving about the world?
--what did these guys actually look like and did that impact how haole folks perceived them or did racism or culture govern the way folks referred to the Native Hawaiian workers, students, musicians, etc.
I will need to return to the last chapter and introduction again and see how my views change.
My very basic initial thoughts have to do with the subject matter/characters who pop in and out:
--how many more Native Hawaiians or other ethnicities from Hawai`i were moving about the world?
--what did these guys actually look like and did that impact how haole folks perceived them or did racism or culture govern the way folks referred to the Native Hawaiian workers, students, musicians, etc.
I will need to return to the last chapter and introduction again and see how my views change.
December 22, 2012
I thought this book was a concise cultural history of the Island's push on the American continent. Looking not only at immigration from the Islands to the continental United States and the reverse, Okihiro analyzes the importance of specific cultural movements of the period (1800 to 1900) on Hawaii's changing infrastructure and how native Hawaiians influenced these changes. He also looks at how Hawaiian mythology and culture influenced continental music, movies, and poetry. I especially enjoyed his analysis of Hawaiian soldiers in the Civil War, ad the roles they played on the main land after the War's end.
May 7, 2009
I couldn't get more than a couple of pages into this one. It is very dry and academic and not at all what I was looking for.
May 24, 2014
Very much a cultural history, this volume covers only portions of Hawaiian history, and then from the Islander point of view.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews