Kavai Strong Washburn

Yeah, so there's an incredibly rich history of not only the literary tradition, but even predating that, the oral tradition and the musical form of that, which is hula, you know, the stories that are told in all of those forms of

of communication as well are incredibly rich.

And so I think that's really where, when you wanna start looking at the storytelling history of the islands and the bookshelf, the first place that's gonna be is in the hearts and lungs of the people that carried stories with them through generations by passing them on through dance and chant and oral traditions.

So that's certainly the very, if you're going back to the very beginning, that's where you would go.

But there was also, I think for a lot of people, you talk about contemporary literature in the islands.

One of the places where kind of a renaissance occurred was with the bamboo ridge.

which was sort of a workshop and a collective that was the place that a lot of the sort of contemporary literature from the islands emerged from.

And some of that managed to build a following or an audience outside of the islands and some of it didn't, right?

A few of the authors that I usually bring up with people when they ask me about the islands, and this is in no way a comprehensive list because there are just so many, are Kiana Davenport, who wrote several novels.

I believe it was both a trilogy and a few other novels.

So there's like the House of Many Gods and Shark Dialogues.

And she's written several others.

She was one of the first novelists that I, you know, there was a larger audience outside of the islands for her.

Loisanne Yamanaka is another writer that I refer to.

And Kiana Davenport's work spans a lot of different ethnic groups, but it talks a lot about native Hawaiians.

Whereas Loisanne Yamanaka's work, or at least the ones that I have read, and I haven't read all of their work for either of these authors, but a lot of her stuff has dealt with the sort of Japanese, Hawaiian, immigrant groups that...

lived on some of the parts of the island that hadn't really been spoken about before.

So there's a novel that's set in Molokai, and there's one that's set in parts of the Big Island.

So Loisanne Yamanaka, you know, Kiana Davenport, a more contemporary author that just came out with a collection, I feel like it was maybe four years ago.

Her name is Christiana Kahakauwila.