"This is Paradise" by Kristiana Kahakauwila ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Short Stories
• US author
• Originally published 2013 (I lost track of this in my book stacks so did not read it in the timely manner required for an Early Reviewer......oops!
• Stories:
• "This Is Paradise":  nature's paradise marred and exploited by humanity, loss to indigenous, hatred for haoles
• "speed of poi"...LOL
• p.23..."Our families are barely affording a life here, the land is being eaten away by developers, the old sugar companies still control water rights.  Not only does paradise no longer belong to us, but we have to watch foreigners destroy it.".....like Native Americans
• "Wanle":  Cock fighting is common, and a metaphor for life
• Epigraph:  "Hawai'i is a cock-pit, on the ground the well-fed cocks fight." - From the Chant of Haui-Ka-Lani
• "Wanle" means 'it is gone'
• p.83 - "In my last semester at college I took a course in poetry.....they write about the beauty and majesty of nature, and I understand why he loved them.  But the Indian failed to understand their work in its fullness, how their poems at times celebrate the violence , loss, sadness, and cruelty inherent in the natural world."
• "The Road To Hana": a love story with conflict
• p.95...."For Becky, however, the past and present existed in the same moment.  In her memory the two met, and through their meeting, she layered them until past and present were like ocean and sky, without noticeable boundary."
• "Thirty-Nine Rules For Making A Hawaiian Funeral Into A Drinking Game":  One drink for every difficult moment during grandmother's funeral
• p.119...."Your father is absent from your uncles' stories not because he left, but because he was never of Kaua'i in the first place.  Because he was in his own world.  Because hi is Hawaiian, but no local."
• p.124..."Understand that your grandmother is in heaven now, and heaven has fighting cocks and Heineken, poi and dried ahi, your uncles' teasing and your aunties' cooking and your cousins laughing with you when you talk.  heaven is them acting like this is where you belong, and if that's what haole pastors call hell, then thank God you finally got here."
• "Portrait of a Good Father": imperfection of love
• p.139..."Her entire life Grace has suspected men know things because they think them, and women know things because they feel them."
• "The Old Paniolo Way":  family dynamics around dying father
• paniolo:  a person who herds cattle; cowboy
• Review:  What an interesting collection of short stories about Hawaii.  Thoughts which come to mind as I think about the collection as a whole include:  ambivalence, wistful yearning, cultural pride, deceptively simple, gently blunt.  I have to be honest and say that no individual story stands out.  It is the overall message which is fairly compelling.  Stories of people in a culture which has been co-opted and changed so that indigenous inhabitants become showpieces and part of a tourist dependent economy, while trying to hold on to their unique identity and values.  This is an old story of colonialism told set in a stunningly beautiful and surprisingly complex location.  The collection provided this reader first-time insight to the Hawaiian culture, which made it particularly fascinating.  Nice collection!