Ka moolelo hou
309 pages, $19
It’s difficult to talk about oral history without referring to Studs Terkel, the legendary researcher behind a slate of seminal oral accounts of the United States in the 20th century. His 1984 tome The Good War is probably the best book yet written about World War II, allowing as it does that critical moment in world history to be told mostly by the people who fought and lived on its front lines, and behind them.
It is a testament to the great work done by the authors of Talking Hawaii’s Story, a new oral history of life in Hawaii during the century just passed, that in many ways it calls to mind Terkel’s masterpiece. Part of that, of course, is the subject matter at hand–Talking Hawaii’s Story, like any book covering that period, is deeply informed by WWII and the tremendous changes it visited on life in these islands.
Where the comparison really shines, however, is in the way the authors were able to coax their subjects out, to get them talking openly and intimately about the highest and lowest moments of their lives. As anyone who has ever conducted an interview knows, that’s no easy task, but present here are all the voices of Hawaii–native, white, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, black and all the rest, in all their mixtures. Talking Hawaii’s Story is a legend of our recent past, and should find a place in every island home and classroom.
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