Pure Manaʻo

As I continue to reflect on a humanities conference that I just attended, I understand better why I got my two graduate degrees in education and not in English to match my BA. The problem that I have with literary scholarship is that sometimes we have to forgive the improbable, seemingly fantastical leaps in critique. As a poet, I would always be astounded when I would do a reading and someone waits around for me to tell me that they know how this character feels because (and then they give me their interpretation). Sometimes the connection is so bizarre that I am not sure where they are getting that connection from and I find myself going through my pieces again trying to find that reading that is invisible to me. However as someone who has been made to feel stupid, literally told "that's wrong, stupid" I also need to honor Rosenblatt's argument that each reading is a transaction between the reader and the text and this interaction is unique to the reader. To me...

An open letter to my LʻArts, I took a photo at the conference I was at this weekend just so you know which time and place I'm talking about. You folks were invited but no one could make it. That's not what I am writing about, but it's to give context. My mom, the original L'Art saw this on FB and said Leahi looked like a turtle popping its head out of the water. After 3 days and sitting through 33 papers/presentations, I think this is an apt metaphor for what I wanted to write about.  It's going to get convoluted because "plenty are the doubts that cloud my mind. . .merciless, merciless time is wasted on the young. . ." is blasting in my ears on loop as I'm writing this (Fly My Pretties - Mud and Stardust by A Girl Named Mo, String Theory) The honu (turtle) metaphor - this was a new conference for me but especially when I don't have to pay, I like to take advantage of professional development that at first does not seem to fit in ...

When I have a draft in my post box with just this title, reality check, and I have no idea what I was trying to say, then yes, √, understood. The reality is that I am drifting but really I think I am too focused. Then I found this and it is all the guidance and reminder I need to continue on.  I am off to find some secret notebooks, except that this probably is my secret notebook.  I am off to pay attention to dreams because the best ideas are the ones I haven't thought of yet. 

For the past two years I have been trying to write about creating a space on the University of Hawai'i West Oʻahu campus - what Bhabha calls Third Space and Anzaldua calls Borderland spaces. From my 2017 article on carving out Indigenous spaces:   Consciousness-raising happens in both a metaphoric as well as a physical space. Third space theorists (Anzaldua 1999, 2000; Irving and Young 2002, 2004) suggest that the creation of "third" or "borderland" spaces can provide the opportunity for creative, novel, and respectful interpersonal relationship dynamics. Anzaldua addresses issues of power and identity in colonized areas, and conceptualizes third or borderland spaces as places or states of ambiguity, of being in-between different "realities" (2000).  What these spaces offer are ways for Indigenous me, one of the  2-7% of  Indigenous faculty members in the University of Hawaiʻi system, to create a safe space to have conversations and le...

I was asked to talk on the last day of an Ed.D program cohort II at UH Mānoa. I graduated with cohort I so sometimes they invite a few of us back to talk about something. They wanted to know what we did after we graduated, how we changed jobs and what advice we had. I am always the one that doesn't really answer the question, but they ask anyway, so I wrote this poem. I think in poetry form and Linda Tuhiwai Smith did a keynote by reciting a poem using the Green Eggs and Ham structure so if she can do it, then that gives me permission. Here is what I'm sharing today: What an Ed.D can and cannot do for you One View, One Story I still come from the mud flats of Kaunakakai the Kūkalahale rains of Mānoa. The ashes and bones of my kūpuna still travel the watery Lahaina Roads in the middle of the ʻAuʻau Channel. My Ed.D does not erase that. I still come from colonization and isolation, desks lined up in rigid rows, concrete and tile separating m...

I have personal stories of sacrifice, isolation, less than "ness," bouts of invisibility and anonymity. I have stories of scraping by, feeling self pity, undeserved, under served, passed over, quieted, silenced, voice ripped out.  I think you do too.  There are a lot of us: female, parallel cultured (Bishop, R. ), from poverty, highly educated BUT. . .(faking it until we make it - we hope) When we are very lucky, we have gathered other females like us so that we can feed each other, laugh, cry, mourn and support each other. I call these women the mana wahine. Together we keep the fire of our power burning because we hold kuleana (obligation) for each other. But in the in between times when we are alone and doing the heavy lifting of our own passions, we must chase away the uglies of self doubt and "other" ness alone.  When I am asked to translate my point of view (as if I were not speaking in English), be less emotional, justify. . .when my...