Island Books
Reality soup feeds the kama'aina soul
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Staff Writer
"Oxtail Soup for the Island Soul" by Peter S. Adler, Ox Bow Press; paper, $12.95
This book isn't what you'd expect from the title, which suggests a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" clone. This collection of essays, originally written by Adler for Islands magazine from 1991 to 1996, isn't composed exclusively of heart-warming stories that reveal the good at the core of man's selfish heart, although there are a few of those. Rather, the stories are Adler's attempt to paint a picture of real-life Hawai'i — slippers-and-T-shirt Hawai'i, kalbi-kimchi-kalua pork Hawai'i — for a magazine audience more used to reading breezy articles about Hawai'i's hidden attractions and high-end resorts.
Yet because the work was really done as a sort of "translation" for people outside Hawai'i, these essays read oddly to me. It's not that I was bored: Adler introduced me, essay after essay, to new people and experiences, from folks in Volcano whose pet is a hulking not-so-wild boar, to a dog who routinely participates in the Waikiki Rough Water Swim.
I kept coming to the end of an essay and thinking, "Yes. And?" After a while, I realized that was rather a compliment to Adler: His portrait of Hawai'i is so well painted that a kama'aina doesn't find much here that's surprising. Rather, we recognize ourselves, smile, and read on.
Adler deals here primarily, though not exclusively, with a certain stratum of Hawai'i, the one in which he mostly lives. It's the world of a well-known business consultant, writer and specialist in conflict resolution, a Caucasian married to an Asian American local woman, a father of three daughters, a man of curiosity and perspective who'd rather scout out story ideas than trim the hedges.
He touches on difficult issues in some essays — pig hunters vs. ecologists, the vexed question of who is "local." But, predictably, given Islands magazine's upscale readership, there isn't much here of Hawai'i's most painful present, such as immigrant families working two jobs and living 12 to a house, or Hawaiians occupying the lists of "worst" statistics in health and social ills. Still, this book would make a good answer for the sort of person who asks brightly, as though no one has ever asked this before, "What's it like living in paradise?"
Adler a couple of times is seduced into hyperbole, suggesting, at one point, that enough oxtail soup might engender world peace. But most of us would probably agree with a central theme of the essays: Living in Hawai'i on any given day is better than living anywhere else.
"Oxtail soup" is Adler's metaphor for the multicultural strains that bind us together — an oblique reference, perhaps, to the old "melting pot" concept; an indicator of how strong are the Asian roots of many of our customs. Oxtail soup is somewhat tricky to eat, as our "local" culture is tricky for outsiders to understand (being much more complex and understated than it appears, as is good oxtail soup).
As he reveals in the opening essay, "A Broth of Islands," about morning soup lust at the old Kam Bowl, Adler knows oxtail soup. And he knows the Hawai'i he's writing about.
Wanda Adams is The Advertiser's books editor. She can be reached at 535-2412 or wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.
