So Local, Yeah? Or Not?

The questions “What high school you went?” and “What was your first encounter with Bamboo Ridge?” served to sort and place each reader at Sunday’s Bamboo Ridge Issue #100 book launch.  Before reading his or her story, each reader was asked to answer those tell-tale questions. Some refused to disclose their alma mater, saying it was top secret or responding with a “yes, I went to high school.” Others launched into semi-nostalgia or apologist-tinged conversation.  Only in Hawaiʻi can a high school alma mater serve as ʻohana identification or neighborhood bragging rights.  Inevitably, the high school connection can lead to conversations that go something like this:  “So you know my cousin, den? Oh yeah, my ex-wife is one Menehune. Oh, nah, what year you wen grad? Aww, shoots, I get plenny family ovah deah. My neighbor’s uncle’s friend’s sister wen grad dat year, too. You know her husband, we went to da same elementary school.”

And so it goes.  So local, yeah?

Just like the latest Bamboo Ridge issue that contains the work of 70 authors, with a portfolio of artwork by Cane Haul Road artist Grant Kagimoto, along with selections from its100-Line/100-Word Online Contest, as well as a special tribute to Hawaiʻi’s own Beat poet, Albert Saijo.

So local, yeah? Or not?

The book launch and reception featured 14 of us, and it was marvelous to hear, see, touch, laugh, gasp, raise eyebrows, emote, ponder and wonder at the variety of literary work that Hawaiʻi produces. From the two Lees—Lee Tonouchi and Lee Cataluna; to college professors Susan Schultz, Gail Harada, Brenda Kwon, and Ann Inoshita and scholar Sylvia Watanabe; to neighbor island school principal Darlene Javar to retirees Moriso Teraoka, Michael Little and Beryl Allene Young. And then there was one of my favorite Filipino poets, Elmer Omar Pizo, whose work received the Editor’s Choice Award for Best Poetry. He talked about the hazards of composing poetry, the divinity of a trapped dead rat, and the plight of butchering a young goat. Darlene Javar read a powerful poem about the death and subsequent unclaimed body of a transgendered person. What binds locals also separates. What identifies locals also blurs.

So local, yeah? Or not?

            The readers and their works made me wonder, what does it really mean to be local? For all intents and purposes, is the word a primary referent to ethnicity and functions as such to identify certain racial? Sometimes is seems like it, but more often than not, it speaks to a shared experience of a group delineated by geography, social class, culture, social mores.  For real? Or not? What does a local writer write about? What does local poetry look and sound like? If “locals” don’t act like “locals” are they still “local”? Don’t erroneously call a Hawaiian local because you could be majorly offending them by lumping them in with other immigrants and settlers.

So what does it mean to be local, really? What does it mean to be a local writer? Is being a local writer a step down from just writer? I’ve been called a local writer, an immigrant poet, a Filipino writer, an Ilokano writer, even a Pacific poet. I guess I’m all that at simultaneously and at differing times with various audiences.

            Well, here’s an example of what it means to be local. After the reading ended, a woman approached me to comment on a line in the “Apo Baket” poem I had read. She began to share her experience with her immigrant grandparents, their hand rolled tobacco toscanis, and other cultural accoutrements. She asked me how I came to know the historical roots of putting the lit end of a Filipino cigar in one’s mouth while smoking—the stanza is:

I watch from inside the screen door, her profile puffing

That familiar Ilokano toscani, her cheeks sucking air,

The tabako’s fiery end insider her mouth, a habit of survival

To withhold any glowing red light from wartime Japanese.

I told her I wasn’t exactly sure if that was why old Filipino women put the lit end of a cigar inside their mouth to smoke it.  It was true of my grandmother, but since it was poetry, I didn’t exactly lie because someone told me (I think) about the peculiar practice. She seemed a little disappointed. But after an animated discussion about higher education, poetry and local literature, we discovered that she is my older sister’s friend’s sister, who went to the same high school as I did. Somehow my transgression was minimized and all was well.

Only in Hawaiʻi.  So local, yeah? Or not?