Author’s note

My debut novel, HULA, is not without controversy. It touches on deeply sensitive issues concerning Native Hawaiians, and I don’t have Native Hawaiian on my birth certificate. It is possible I am Native Hawaiian. But because of poor records and interpretations of what it meant to claim Hawaiian blood years ago, I do not know.

Initially, HULA was going to simply be a story about my home. What it became was a story that touched on all the complicated, painful details of what history has done to my beloved island chain. Similar to me, Hiʻi is light skinned, doesn’t look like her mother, and doesn’t have Native Hawaiian on her birth certificate. Unlike me, her mother does.

As the story unfolds, that becomes a major point, exploring why it matters and how much is at stake. The research required was a journey into my own personal pain and confusion, but it provided long overdue clarity of all I had intuited as a child and allowed me to find words for the questions I havae struggled with all my life. HULA explores a lot of sensitive issues, one of which is the appropriation and commodification of Hawaiʻi’s culture. It talks about race and enthnicity as well as the challenges that continue to plague the place where I’m from and the community I belong to. It’s about how reductive and harmful blood quantum laws are to all Hawai’iʻs communities who have resided there for generations, native or not, and how those laws are from a point of the American colonial project that have divided and excluded people for years.

My mom always joked that I was lucky I made my entrance into the world on the night of her birthday, when their modest house was full of guests celebrating the occasion. If not for those witnesses, she’d say, she never would have believed that gangly white baby was hers. As I got older, my looks continued to be a point of interest. How was I so fair and my mom so dark? How were my eyes gray, when hers were so dark brown? I wasn’t raised with my father (although I knew he was a haole from the continent), so my connection to my mother was my focal point.

Coming from a local family, the divide between locals and tourists was always clear. As a child, I was painfully congnizant of the impression my freckled light skin and gray-blue eyes made. It was that discomfort coupled with the complicated facts of where I lived that would turn into a lifelong quest to understand the notion of belonging and where cultural inheritance intersects with personal identity. (It didn’t help that I was given the name Iolani, after the beloved hula dancer Iolani Luahine. The origins of the gifting of that name has its own story, one I took with great seriousness and honor. But how to live up to it if I was not Hawaiian?)

The complicated facts of where I lived is why HULA is considered historical fiction. There’s a lot to it. For the purposes of this note I will try to keep it simple. The Kingdom of Hawaii was stolen. Through nefarious means the United States took possession of it. When it came to giving back some of the land taken during the occupation, the USA defined Native Hawaiians using blood quantum – something they had utilized as a subtractive tool of disenfranchisement towards the native peoples of North America.

In Hawaii, everyone talked about ethnicity in terms of “how much,” aka your blood quantum. “I’m half this, a quarter that” was how the breakdown would go. In school, they passed out forms on the first day, but those only wanted to know if you were Native Hawaiian. My grandfather had always insisted we were, that it had gotten left off the birth certificates at some point because it was a “small” amount. But I wouldn’t have dared assert that we were, not without the ability to prove it. I am in the process of researching my family lineage and have identified a great-great-great grandmother born in Halaula, North Kohala, on Hawaiʻi Island. I am hopeful to continue this exploration of personal discovery and history.

I hated the ambiguity of my youth, hated the fact that there were only so many ancestors we could trace. Growing up, that was one of the only points of being Native Hawaiian versus not that I was aware of. My early angst came from a different place, one less political and much more personal.

I wanted to look like I belonged to my mom. I wanted to fit into my family and my world.

When I became a mother to a child whose father was definitely Native Hawaiian, I was relieved she would at least have the certainty I never did. Time passed. I got divorced and remarried and eventually had another child. This one would not have that designation on her birth certificate. Wanting to protect them from the confusion that had plagued my childhood, I kept them from Hawaii. Not necessarily the place – our family was still there, so we visited, but I didnʻt encourage them to dance hula or learn about the culture we were rooted to.

I eventually came to realize I had neglected my duties as a parent, keeping them from truly knowing and participating in the perpetuation of the traditions of the land of which I and generations of my family are from. This too was part of the beginning seeds of what HULA became.

As scary and vulnerable as it was to put Hula out into the world, I hope this book inspires many thoughtful and overdue conversations. Hiʻi’s story is interwoven with a story told by a collective voice, which to me captured the spirit of what it was to be a part of Hilo – a chorus of residents, ancestors, gods and goddesses, those who would have been subjects of the Hawaiian Kingdom who weren’t Native Hawaiian, Native Hawaiians, those insisting on sovereignty, and those fighting for their rights within the framework of being America’s fiftieth state. But ultimately, it is a story written as a love letter to my hometown, albeit a complicated one. A celebration of all it is and has been.

I am always open to discuss the many issues and concerns Hula addresses - whether it be joining your book club for a discussion or something more personal, I welcome you to reach out. I would love to hear from you.

                                                                    With great aloha,

                                                                        Jasmin Iolani Hakes