Eiko Kosasa

Comment

Comment by Ken Conklin on June 15, 2009 at 10:37pm

A new book published by the University of Hawaii Press (subsidized by taxpayers) is deeply insulting to Hawaii's people of Asian ancestry. The first insult comes by telling them that they are guilty of collaborating with Caucasians to oppress ethnic Hawaiians. The next insult comes by telling them that even if their families have lived in Hawaii for several generations, they are merely "settlers" in someone else's homeland and they have a duty to abandon their hard-won equal rights in order to accept a position of subservience to ethnic Hawaiians. Perhaps the deepest insult of all is the book's attempt to undermine the patriotism of Asian Americans by telling them they have a moral duty to help Hawaiian sovereignty activists liberate Hawaii from American colonialism and rip the 50th star off the flag. If anyone thinks this paragraph is an exaggeration, or a case of fear-mongering, then please read the entire book review, including the book's five-page celebratory explanation of the metaphors in a political cartoon showing Hawaii's first Filipino Governor, Ben Cayetano, lynching a Native Hawaiian in order to give pleasure to a Caucasian.

The book is "Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai'i" edited by Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008.

The major book review is at
http://tinyurl.com/8mkdmj