Surrounded by Spirits: Hauntings of Identity in Waimea Summer by John Dominis Holt
Abstract
In 1976, John Dominis Holt published what would be considered the first novel by a Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiian] author in English, Waimea Summer. This coming-of-age narrative set in 1930’s Hawai‘i follows fourteen-year-old Mark Hull, a half White, half Kanaka Maoli boy who experiences a series of hauntings on his uncle’s farm, all the while grappling with a burgeoning queer identity and conflicted cultural loyalties. In the post American-occupied Hawai‘i, the teachings of Christian missionaries and anti-sodomy laws have all but eradicated the aikāne [homosexual] relationships practiced by the ali‘i [royals] of Marks’ genealogy, and yet the boy’s queer desires refuse to die. In this paper, the novel is interpreted through Laura Westengard’s theory of the queer Gothic, in which concepts of the American nuclear heterosexual family are challenged by the burgeoning past, thus returning the narrative and agency to the queer Indigenous subject.
Keywords
coming-of-age literature; Gothic fiction; Hawaiian literature; John Dominis Holt; Pacific literatures; Waimea Summer; queer theory
References
Aleardo, Z. (2013). Sodomy laws and gender variance in Tahiti and Hawai‘i. Laws, 2(2), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws2020051.
Bingham, H. (1855). A residence of twenty-one years in the Sandwich islands; or the civil, religious, and political history of those islands: Comprising a particular view of the missionary operations connected with the introduction and progress of Christianity and civilization among the Hawaiian people: Third edition revised and corrected.
To which is added a table of missionaries of the American board to the Sandwich islands. Canandaigua, NY: H. D. Goodwin.
Cohen, J. J. (1996). Monster culture (seven theses). In J. J. Cohen (Ed.), Monster theory: Reading culture (pp. 3–25). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Gale, H. (2019). Ho‘onani, hula warrior. Toronto: Tundra Books.
ho’omanawanui, k. (2017). A cairn of stories: Establishing a foundation of Hawaiian literature / He ahu mo’olelo: e ho’okahua i ka paepae mo’olelo Palapala Hawai’i. Palapala, 1, 51+.
Holt, J. (1993). Recollections: Memoirs of John Dominis Holt 1919–1935. Honolulu, HI: Ku Pa‘a.
Holt, J. (1995). On being Hawaiian. Honolulu, HI: Ku Pa‘a. (Original work published 1964).
Holt, J. (1998). Waimea summer: A novel. Honolulu, HI: Ku Pa‘a. (Original work published 1976).
Kame‘eleihiwa, L. (1992). Native land and foreign desires. Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum.
Kikuchi, W. K. (1976). The fireball in Hawaiian folklore. In A. L. Kaeppler & H. A. Nimmo, Directions in Pacific traditional literature: Essays in honor of Katharine Luomala (pp. 157–172). Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum.
Lyons, P. (2018). John Dominis Holt’s Kanaka Maoli modernism. Symploke, 26(1), 93–108.
McDougall, B. (2011). ‘O ka lipo o ka lā, ‘O ka lipo o ka pō: Cosmogonic kaona in contemporary Kanaka Maoli literature. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of English, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Mānoa, USA. Retrieved from https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/101627.
Morris, R. (1990). Aikāne: Accounts of Hawaiian same-sex relationships in the journals of Captain Cook’s Third Voyage (1776–80). Journal of Homosexuality, 19(4), 21–54. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v19n04_03.
Najita, S. (2001). History, trauma, and the discursive construction of ‘race’ in John Dominis Holt’s Waimea Summer. Cultural Critique, 47(1), 167–214. https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2001.0026.
Ngozi Adichie, C. (2009, July). The danger of a single story [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.
Osorio, J. H. (2018). (Re)membering ‘upena of intimacies: A Kanaka Maoli mo‘olelo beyond queer theory. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of English, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Mānoa, USA. Retrieved from https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/62423.
Pukui, M. K., Haertig, E. W, & Lee, C. A. (1972). Nānā i ke kumu (look to the source) (vol. 2). Honolulu, HI: Hui Hānai.
Sedgwick, E. K. (1997). Paranoid reading and reparative reading; or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this introduction is about you. In E. K. Sedgwick (Ed.), Novel gazing: Queer readings in fiction (pp. 1–37). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shurer, O. (Producer), Clements, R., & Musker, J. (Directors). (2016). Moana [Motion picture]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Skowera, M. (2019). Lewis Barnavelt and the rainbow over New Zebedee: Queering The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura, 1(1), 85–108. https://doi.org/10.32798/dlk.29.
Thomas, E. E. (2019). The dark fantastic: Race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Westengard, L. (2019). Gothic queer culture: Marginalized communities and the ghosts of insidious trauma. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Witkowska, A. (2013). American Gothic, czyli horror amerykańskiego domostwa. Analiza „udomowionej”, amerykańskiej wersji gotyku na przykładzie seriali American Gothic i American Horror Story. Media – Kultura – Komunikacja Społeczna, 9, 154–162.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa United States
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3748-1915
Alexander Casey – MA, prepares a doctoral dissertation at the Department of English of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (United States) on queer children’s literature. Contact: ancasey@hawaii.edu.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Open Access Policy
All articles presented on the pages of ”Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura” are published in open access under a Creative Commons license - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). It means that:
- they can be made available and quoted under the condition of explicit and clear indication of the author/authors of the referenced text;
- you cannot use legal or technological means that would limit others in using the text under the terms of the license.
More information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
