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Culture influences
AN ESSAY : culture
National cultural influences
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As a native Hawaiian, Kristiana Kahakauwila has extensive knowledge on Hawaiian customs and culture. Though she was not raised in Hawaii, Kristiana is still connected to the culture. Her upbringing in California did not separate her from the customs of Hawaii. Kristiana has a master’s in fine arts and a degree in comparative literature. Her degrees and background with Hawaiian culture led her to write the book “This is Paradise,” which is composed of multiple short stories. Each short story unveils a new layer of Hawaiian culture that many people tend to overlook. Before the first short story begins, Kristiana sets the tone for the novel with the cover of the book. At first look the cover of the book features warm tones and the silhouette …show more content…
“The Old Paniolo Way” focuses on the identity we form away from home and the identity we have when we return home. Kristiana expresses the theme through the tension the son has with his family after being embraced in a culture away from home. The story follows the tension between the old Hawaiian traditions and the new perspectives the son has learned on the continent. The story also focuses on how we address the fluctuations between our identities across place in a stressful situation. In the story, the narrator has an identity disturbance when he returns home as his father’s death draws near. The customs of his family frown upon his identity, which makes it hard for the narrator to open up to his family. In one scene in the story, the narrator tries to come out to his father but once again hides his identity (Kahakauwila 217). The narrator has become used to an accepting culture, but is once again thrown backwards when he returns home. The final story perfectly examines the different identities an individual can have across place. Kristiana uses this narration and Hawaiian terms once again in order to address the cultural differences present in
The Hawaiian culture is known throughout the western world for their extravagant luaus, beautiful islands, and a language that comes nowhere near being pronounceable to anyone but a Hawaiian. Whenever someone wants to “get away” their first thought is to sit on the beach in Hawai’i with a Mai tai in their hand and watch the sun go down. Haunani-Kay Trask is a native Hawaiian educated on the mainland because it was believed to provide a better education. She questioned the stories of her heritage she heard as a child when she began learning of her ancestors in books at school. Confused by which story was correct, she returned to Hawai’i and discovered that the books of the mainland schools had been all wrong and her heritage was correctly told through the language and teachings of her own people. With her use of pathos and connotative language, Trask does a fine job of defending her argument that the western world destroyed her vibrant Hawaiian culture.
of the native tongue is lost , certain holidays may not be celebrated the same , and American born generations feel that they might have lost their identity , making it hard to fit in either cultures . Was is significant about this book is the fact it’s like telling a story to someone about something that happened when they were kid . Anyone can relate because we all have stories from when we were kids . Alvarez presents this method of writing by making it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story about Latin Americans , when
Bobbie Ann Mason and Sherman Alexie are two modern authors who write about their different childhood experiences and their hopes and desires for futures outside of the customs they were accustomed to. In her 1999 excerpt “Being Country” from her book Clear Springs: A Memoir, author and essayist Mason describes her childhood on a farm in rural Kentucky. Despite her childhood being pleasant, she rebelled against the simplistic confines that type of lifestyle demanded (106). Alexie writes in his essay from 1997 “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” of life on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he was born. He tells us how he used his love of reading as a way to escape from the Indian world and found success outside of the reservation. Even though they came from different cultures, Alexie and Mason were exposed at a young age to similar outside influences that helped shape their self-identities. As a result, they both envisioned futures that were not only ambitious but different from the lives they had been born into.
With the graceful starkness of traditional Japanese haiku, Kawabata reveals a twisted set of love affairs between four people that ultimately lead to their downfalls. Haiku depicts a meditational view of the world where nothing is meaningless; in Beauty and Sadness all of the relations represent aspects of new and old Japan, mirroring the rise and fall of Japanese culture in their movements. Among these relationships, perhaps the most traditional is found between Oki and Otoko– although it is tragic and somewhat leacherous, the bond between a young woman (or girl) and an older man is an acceptable affair in traditional Japanese culture. They represent the oldest parts of Japanese custom, and adhere to that measure throughout the novel. Oki’s wish to hear the temple bells with Otoko reflects this long established pattern of old man and young girl, as ...
Brown, DeSoto. "Beautiful, Romantic Hawaii: How the Fantasy Image Came to Be." The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. 20 (1994): 252-271.
Jovik, Sonia P. and James O. Jovik. (1997). “History.” Atlas of Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, p.408.
Jess, Row. "For You." Ed. Keith Kachtick. You Are Not Here and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006. 101-23. Print.
Hawaii is a top vacation destination by many tourists all over the world. When Hawaii comes to mind many people and different cultures imagine sandy beaches, warm, blue waters, lush green backdrops, Hula dancers in grass skirts with flowers in their hair and leis around their necks. These visual representations are iconic symbols of Hawaii and of what many have come to define as Hawaiian. These images and ideas painted by the visitor industry most often take place at the expense of the Hawaiians historic culture. These stereotypes conjured up by the tourist indus...
Moreover, Tayo's struggle to return to indigenous cultural traditions parallels Silko's own struggle as a writer who wants to integrate Native American traditions into the structure of her novel. Instead of simply following the literary conventions used by other American and European writers, Silko develops new li...
While walking down the beach, the white, warm sand mushes between your toes. The sun’s radiant rays beam off your glowing skin. The sound of waves crashing blocks out the external world. There is no other place like the gorgeous tropical islands of Hawaii. The wide range of flowers, cuisine, and wildlife makes it one of the most picturesque places on Earth. It also leads the United States with the highest racial minority rate making it the most diverse state. However, there are numerous hidden dangers of Hawaii, and not all ethnic groups get along causing sharp tensions across the island.
In “The Truth about Stories”, Thomas King, demonstrate connection between the Native storytelling and the authentic world. He examines various themes in the stories such as; oppression, racism, identity and discrimination. He uses the creational stories and implies in to the world today and points out the racism and identity issues the Native people went through and are going through. The surroundings shape individuals’ life and a story plays vital roles. How one tells a story has huge impact on the listeners and readers. King uses sarcastic tone as he tells the current stories of Native people and his experiences. He points out to the events and incidents such as the government apologizing for the colonialism, however, words remains as they are and are not exchanged for actions. King continuously alerts the reader about taking actions towards change as people tend to be ignorant of what is going around them. At the end people give a simple reason that they were not aware of it. Thus, the author constantly reminds the readers that now they are aware of the issue so they do not have any reason to be ignorant.
Eden Robinson is a Haisla writer who was born at Haisla Nation Kitimaat Reserve on 19th January 1968 (“Eden Robinson” 2007). She has a Haisla father and a Heiltsuk mother and spent both her childhood and her adolescence in the Reserve (“Eden Robinson” 2007). Robinson obtained a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of Victoria and also earned a master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia (“Eden Robinson” 2007). Monkey Beach is her first novel and was published in 2000 (“Eden Robinson” 2007).
Since 1840 the Hawaiian Islands have been an escape to a tropical paradise for millions of tourists. People all over the world encounter alluring, romanticized pictures of Hawai'i's lush, tropical vegetation, exotic animals, beautiful beaches, crystal clear water, and fantastical women. This is the Hawai'i tourists know. This is the Hawai’i they visit. However, this Hawai'i is a state of mind, a corporate-produced image existing on the surface. More precisely, it is an aftermath of relentless colonization of the islands' native inhabitants by the United States. These native Hawaiians experience a completely different Hawai'i from the paradise tourists enjoy. No one makes this as clear as Haunani-Kay Trask, a native Hawaiian author. In her book, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i and through her poetry in Light in the Crevice Never Seen, Trask provides an intimate account of the tourist industry's impact on native Hawaiian culture. She presents a negative perspective of the violence, pollution, commercial development, and cultural exploitation produced by the tourist industry. Trask unveils the cruel reality of suffering and struggling through a native Hawaiian discourse. Most of the world is unaware of this.
Kristiana Kahakauwila's, a local Hawaiian brought up in California, perspective view of Hawaii is not the one we visually outwardly recognize and perceive in a tourist brochure, but paints a vivid picture of a modern, cutting edge Hawai`i. The short story "This Is Paradise", the ironically titled debut story accumulation, by Kahakauwila, tell the story of a group narrative that enacts a bit like a Greek ensemble of voices: the local working class women of Waikiki, who proximately observe and verbally meddle and confront a careless, puerile youthful tourist, named Susan, who is attracted to the more foreboding side of the city's nightlife. In this designation story, Susan is quieted into innocent separated by her paradisiacal circumventions, lulled into poor, unsafe naïve culls. Kahakauwila closes her story on a dismal somber note, where the chorus, do to little too late of what would have been ideal, to the impairment of all. Stereotype, territorial, acceptance, and unity, delineates and depicts the circadian lives of Hawaiian native locals, and the relationships with the neglectful, candid tourists, all while investigating and exploring the pressure tension intrinsically in racial and class division, and the wide hole in recognition between the battle between the traditional Hawaiian societal culture and the cutting edge modern world infringing on its shores.
...t, Stephen, gen. ed. “Paradise Lost.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2012. Print. 36-39.