Unfamiliar Fishes Bring Sarah Vowell to Town Hall

The Unfamiliar Fishes of Sarah Vowell's new book about Hawaii are not mahi mahi, mano (sharks), or even the infamous humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Rather, the strange creatures swarming Hawaii's beautiful coasts are people—specifically, missionaries from New England—and Vowell visits Town Hall on Monday night to talk about their influence on Hawaiian culture.

Vowell's book traces how these "unfamiliar" figures from the mainland made a major impact on Hawaiian culture in the 1800s. The missionaries certainly did some good things in Hawaii: writing down the native language, teaching the natives to read, and publishing books in native Hawaiian. They also, of course, did a few bad things: dismantling many important traditions, bringing in foreign diseases and invasive species, and paving the way for the eventual U.S. annexation of Hawaii as part of a massive imperialist push in 1898 (we also grabbed Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in that year).

Unfamiliar Fishes is filled with random anecdotes about Hawaii's history: hula ma'i celebrates royal genitalia (honoring procreation, to Hawaiians; totally smutty, to Puritan missionaries), drunken horseback riding and Catholicism were both once outlawed, and mission buildings were built with coral (but covered with stucco patterned to look like brick). These anecdotes add up to a larger story about the way that Americans in general, and missionaries in particular, obliterated valuable traditions in order to advance their own agenda. As Vowell observes, "plastering over the natural rock is the perfect symbol of what [the missionaries] hoped to do to the Hawaiians' earthy way of life."

It's easy to see many lessons and parallels for the current day in the missionaries' overhaul of Hawaiian culture. Early on, Vowell sets up a distinction between the Hawaiians' reverence for taro—considered the brother of all Hawaiians in the Hawaiian creation story—and the missionaries' feelings of dominion over all creatures. Respect for the land emerges as an important Hawaiian value throughout the book—and one that we would do well to adopt more seriously ourselves.

Even King Kamehameha, famous in part for running opponents off a cliff at the Battle of Nu'uanu, admonished his people to take care when trapping birds for their feathers: "When you catch the birds do not strangle them. Take what feathers you want and let them go to grow more." Sadly, as Vowell notes, the o'o and mamo birds once revered for their beautiful feathers are now extinct, due to a combination of hunting, habitat changes, and invasive species (brought on in part by our friends the missionaries).

And it's in the "letting go to grow more" part that missionaries failed Hawaii. Rather than learning from the natives' reverence for the land and deep dedication to traditions such as the hula, missionaries cultivated non-native crops (such as substituting sugar for taro, which required major irrigation intervention) and even at one point persuaded Hawaiian royalty to outlaw hula. This resulted in a culture divided between its traditional influences and strict new expectations, many of which were not suited to the area.

One such example of the dual pressures on Hawaiians comes in the case of Nahi'ena'ena, the daughter of Kamehameha, who married her brother (incest was traditionally perceived as the best way to preserve royal bloodlines) in a traditional Hawaiian ceremony but also had a Christian wedding to a (different) missionary-approved match. Multiple forces were pulling Hawaiians in conflicting directions, and not always with positive results.

As Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, wondered after a positive experience traveling to Vienna: "Can it possibly be that these light hearted happy people are all going to Hell? What a contrast to our miserable bigoted community." It may be difficult to view the island paradise of Hawaii as "miserable" in any way, but misery is what outside influence can bring.

Ultimately, while Unfamiliar Fishes is entertaining, it (as many histories do) leaves the reader a little unsettled, and with more than a few questions. Why view the history of America's least white state through such a very white lens? Why start with the missionaries rather than the natives? And perhaps most importantly, a general (and abiding) question: why have so many forces felt so entitled to meddle so much in matters that had so little to do with them? At what point do unfamiliar fishes stop lurking in the shadows and start doing good (or trying to)? And how much good, ultimately, can come from outside influence vs. internal initiative?

These questions are difficult (if not impossible) to answer, but Vowell deserves commendation for raising them in a book that remains fun to read, as well as emotionally poignant. Vowell closes her story with a reference to the famous Hawaiian musician Bruddah Iz's "Hawaii '78"; if the song doesn't make you cry, nothing will:

All of the fighting that the king had done
To conquer all these islands
Now there's condominiums
How would he feel if saw Hawaii now?

Monday @ Town Hall // 7:30 to 9 p.m. // $5