A review by mezekial
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
After a summer of raging fires in Maui, built atop many years of mainstream cultural brainwashing about Hawai'i, Wasburn's debut novel stands as an essential voice in the long-emerging trend of books-written-by-people-from-the-places-they're-about, here to dispel widely-held cultural myths about America's No. 1 Vacation Getaway Spot by giving them hardly any oxygen. This is not The White Lotus, with its focus on (mostly) white tourism and how that confronts the much more complicated reality of colonialism; rather, the book is entirely focused on the Flores family, and colonialism looms like a high-pressure system throughout the novel's 373 pages without being "confronted" directly. To do so would give that kind of story more power, and take away from the stories that matter more; in Washburn's case, this is Malia and Aguie, a married couple who have recently discovered that their youngest of three, Nainoa, is perhaps the focal point for returning Hawai'ian gods. This leads to special treatment, a savior complex, and a resulting difficult life for him and his two older siblings: Kaui, the overlooked middle child despite her academic prowess, and Dean, the rising basketball star.
Colonialism does not manifest as a person, or set of people, or specific event, but rather can be traced throughout the characters lives. It manifests as money issues, meritocratic issues, identity issues--all of which are grappled with and maneuvered around but never truly defeated. Washburn's idiomatic, liquid prose stays focused within the voice in each character, zooming in on the intricacies of their lives and how they are frequently dashed against these aforementioned issues without pointing fingers, necessarily, at white colonialism.
But the novel isn't coy; it knows, and we know, where and how this started. It doesn't take long to Google "Dole fruit company" or "Hawaiian sovereignty movement" to put things together, and even if not the novel does it for you: the mother, Malia, in one particularly captivating passage, asks the reader what they would do "when pono, a healing word, a power word--a word that is emotions and relationships and objects and the past and the present and the future, a thousand prayers all at once, worth eighty-three of the words from the English (righteousness, morality, prosperity, excellence, assets, carefulness, resources, fortune, necessity, hope, and on and on)--is outlawed?" In a space where so much of a cultural identity has been diminished, it makes sense why the parents are so desperate to hang on to every last shred of their kids' sense of place. In another telling scene, after Dean has returned home to help find his missing younger brother, the father asks him mockingly all the ways in which he has turned haole: butter on rice, wearing shoes indoors, multiple showers a day, etc. The siblings even claim that, every moment they spend in a different place--San Diego, Portland, Spokane--the brown seems to leech or bleed out of them.
As the plot builds and tragedies pile up, the novel seems to make a fascinating claim: that the hero arc is a sham, unfit to solve anything and resulting only in the destruction of whoever's unfortunate shoulders carry the burden of responsibility. Campbell is cast aside, the Eurocentric narrative clearly unfit for an island--a people, a culture--that requires an approach much closer to the heart. Only together, the Flores seem to say, by lifting up each person's unique differences and talents, can true change be authored. The sum of the parts is potentially greater than the whole; or, maybe more accurately, is worth far more than the American lie of individualism.
Colonialism does not manifest as a person, or set of people, or specific event, but rather can be traced throughout the characters lives. It manifests as money issues, meritocratic issues, identity issues--all of which are grappled with and maneuvered around but never truly defeated. Washburn's idiomatic, liquid prose stays focused within the voice in each character, zooming in on the intricacies of their lives and how they are frequently dashed against these aforementioned issues without pointing fingers, necessarily, at white colonialism.
But the novel isn't coy; it knows, and we know, where and how this started. It doesn't take long to Google "Dole fruit company" or "Hawaiian sovereignty movement" to put things together, and even if not the novel does it for you: the mother, Malia, in one particularly captivating passage, asks the reader what they would do "when pono, a healing word, a power word--a word that is emotions and relationships and objects and the past and the present and the future, a thousand prayers all at once, worth eighty-three of the words from the English (righteousness, morality, prosperity, excellence, assets, carefulness, resources, fortune, necessity, hope, and on and on)--is outlawed?" In a space where so much of a cultural identity has been diminished, it makes sense why the parents are so desperate to hang on to every last shred of their kids' sense of place. In another telling scene, after Dean has returned home to help find his missing younger brother, the father asks him mockingly all the ways in which he has turned haole: butter on rice, wearing shoes indoors, multiple showers a day, etc. The siblings even claim that, every moment they spend in a different place--San Diego, Portland, Spokane--the brown seems to leech or bleed out of them.
As the plot builds and tragedies pile up, the novel seems to make a fascinating claim: that the hero arc is a sham, unfit to solve anything and resulting only in the destruction of whoever's unfortunate shoulders carry the burden of responsibility. Campbell is cast aside, the Eurocentric narrative clearly unfit for an island--a people, a culture--that requires an approach much closer to the heart. Only together, the Flores seem to say, by lifting up each person's unique differences and talents, can true change be authored. The sum of the parts is potentially greater than the whole; or, maybe more accurately, is worth far more than the American lie of individualism.