Learning to prize ourselves

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

I've read the quote over and over in the last month. I tried to memorize it and quote it exactly in conversation and resist the urge to embellish or rewrite. Here it is in its true, simple form:

"A poet's hope is to be like some valley cheese. Local, but prized elsewhere."

W. H. Auden said that. He was talking about writing. I came across the quote in an article about cheese.

But it amazes me how applicable and informative that simple thought is to so much of Hawai'i.

We tend to operate on exactly the opposite notion: that the things we as locals prize most are not valued outside of our culture, and conversely, that in order to export something from Hawai'i that will be pleasing (and commercially viable) elsewhere, it must reflect an outsider's point of view.

To be sure, this is true in some cases. Spam musubi IS an acquired taste no matter how crispy you fry the Spam first and how fresh the nori is. But in our mindset, we often don't give anyone on the outside a chance to acquire our taste. We make an assumption. We limit the choices offered.

The attitude is pervasive. To start by pointing to our visitor industry seems almost too easy, but it is the most obvious example. We sell an illusion of Hawai'i that none of us live in. We tell them about a lone set of footprints on a deserted beach, something none of us have ever seen unless we were out before dawn after a really high tide in a remote cove on Moloka'i. There would never be pictures of picnicking families packed tarp-to-tarp and hibachi-to-hibachi at the Ala Moana park in tourism ads, nor would there be shots of the kind of party WE call a lu'au, with paper plates, limp streamers and balloons and kids sleeping on goza in the corners.

We don't think anyone outside Hawai'i can appreciate our stories. We read Southern novels that are very local to a specific place, we love the work of Woody Allen, which is extremely parochial, but we assume that our stuff is too inside-insider to travel beyond these shores. Try to think of a book or movie or television show set in Hawai'i where the main character isn't somebody from somewhere else discovering Hawai'i from the outside-in.

But it's changing. It's been slow, but the tide is turning. The success of the art of Lois Ann Yamanaka, Nora Okja Keller, Keali'i Reichel, Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom and Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is the clearest example. Their work is loved both here and abroad.

And from the other direction, the world is starting to figure out that there's more to Hawai'i than tiki torches and pineapple salad boats. They sense a richness here that we enjoy, and that they're hungry for. (And it's not just the weather.)

The idea is surfacing that to be most richly universal, one must be most sincerely local, and that to be true to our culture serves all best.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com