Over time I've somewhat embraced the inevitable role I've been given as that "token" Hawaiian girl, and have hopefully acclimated enough NOT to spawn charity donations in the winter from people who know I'm just not from here. But given that, there are a few things you should know.

Unbeknownst to many people in the continental U.S. (called the "mainland," where I'm from), there is a clear and distinct difference between "Hawaiians" and "Hawaii locals." What many people here don't know is that Hawaiian is an ethnicity. Native Hawaiians exist. And on the islands, they really make it a point to differentiate themselves from Hawaii locals, sometimes causing tension with people who don't know about the discrepancy and call themselves Hawaiian anyway, without really knowing what they're talking about.

So no Karen, I know you've been living in Hawaii for a whole ten months now, and you think it's really cool to post about it on Facebook, but you're not Hawaiian. You'll never be Hawaiian. And neither will I.

A lot of this is because history. The negotiations that resulted in Hawaii being declared a U.S. state on August 21, 1959 weren't exactly peaceful ones. What many people don't know is that a whole kingdom existed before it, and the reigning monarch at the time, Queen Lili'uokalani, was put under house arrest by the U.S. military before she agreed to sign the contract that would let the United States occupy the islands and establish a government there. To this day, many Hawaiians believe that the islands were forcibly taken from them and attribute the increased Westernization that naturally ensued to their dwindling bloodline.

Queen Lili'uokalani

With statehood came tourism, and with tourism came people from all corners of the world moving to the islands and claiming residency. While decades have passed since then and things have settled down, what remains is a rift between Native Hawaiians, many of whom still push for the reinstatement of their stolen monarchy, and Hawaii locals who either moved there from elsewhere, or were born there, but aren't ethnically "Hawaiian." 

For this reason, there is an important difference between a Hawaiian and a Hawaii local, which many people, without knowing the historical context of the state, are understandably ignorant of. "Hawaiian" isn't something you can just throw around just because you were born there like "Texan" or "Chicagoan."  The label actually has deeper roots that strike a chord with many people on the islands, more negatively to some than to others. 

But ehh, of course, while I'm in Missouri, no one really cares to know the difference. I'll deal with my label as "that one Hawaiian chick" for now.

I guess the one bad thing that comes with being born and raised in Hawaii is how accustomed you are to how beautiful it is. 

It's only when you leave the islands for college or something do you realize how lucky you really were.

Suddenly the sunset you saw every day for twenty years 

gains novelty 

and you understand why people spend their life savings

 to visit a place you always knew as your backyard. 

You'll obsessively compare new sunsets and landscapes to the home you once knew 

in an attempt to satiate the appetite for beauty Hawaii gave you

but in due time, you'll only reach the inevitable conclusion 

that Hawaii is just in a tier of its own. 

Leaving never gets any easier.

1/15/2015

I spent the first 18 years of my life on a beach in Hawaii.

My childhood home was built, quite literally, on the beach, and waking up every morning to a wide-window view of pink and purple skies, rolling waves, and dark, palm tree silhouettes swaying in the wind was my “normal.”

I lived so close to the shore, in fact, that one of my clearest childhood memories today is being 10 years old, complaining to my parents in the middle of the night that I couldn't sleep because the ocean was "too loud."

The view from my parents' balcony in 2012, obviously taken during my (short-lived) phase in film photography.

In retrospect, I realize how ridiculous a complaint that was.

Growing up in one of the most coveted vacation spots in the world, needless to say, had its perks. The beaches were amazing. I still miss the food. And yeah, summer all-year-round wasn’t bad. But perhaps my favorite part about Hawaii was the strong sense of tradition and culture I felt from people all over the globe every single day. The island I lived on was truly a cultural melting pot where people came as one in ways unheard of in the rest of the country. As a biracial American with an immigrant mother, Hawaii was my haven. I made lifelong friends from all walks of life. But it was also all I ever knew - to me, that was “normal.”

In Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz writes, "What I saw at Yale I have continued to see at campuses around the country. Everybody looks extremely normal, and everybody looks the same. No hippies, no punks, no art school types or hipsters, no butch lesbians or gender queers, no black kids in dashikis.”

“32 shades of vanilla,” he goes on to describe it.

While I won't use this blog to type up a book report or make arguably political stances on minorities, diversity, and the like, what I will say is this: It wasn’t until coming to Mizzou for college that I saw what “normal” really was. Like Deresiewicz appropriately put it, everybody to me looked exactly the same. Perhaps it was because of my own cultural background. Perhaps it was because of the unique place I grew up in. But in any case, my freshman year in college proved to be an extremely difficult one as I grew into what I know now to be the biggest transition of my life thus far. Not only was I struggling to figure out my own identity just like every other young person in the world, but I also faced the pressure to fit into a mechanized mold in an area of the country I'd never visited, where the universal “normal” seemed to contradict everything I was.

“No hippies, no punks, no art school types or hipsters,” Deresiewicz says. No tiny, biracial girls from Hawaii wearing printed, floral leggings in the dead of winter to remind her of sunnier days, I’d add.

Naturally, I felt out of place. And naturally, it made sense. I'm an outlier here no matter how you slice it. I mean, I should have expected it from the get-go. I'm from Hawaii. I'm half Japanese, raised by a mother from Okinawa, Japan. My dad's an American from California, but he lives in Qatar, as he has for the last 4 or 5 years. My stepmom's from Thailand. I have family from everywhere. I come from everywhere. I guess you might say I'm just a culmination of weird things from every random corner of the world. For years, I tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling I had, being an outlier in the middle of Missouri. For years, I tried so hard to be "normal."

But recently, I've come to the realization that I will always BE an outlier. That's just who I am. I will always feel out of place, because I am out of place. There's no such thing as a comfort zone for me here because that simply wasn't the path I chose. I didn't come here for that.

Since my first year in Missouri, I've learned to take that feeling of discomfort as the token "girl from Hawaii" -- and thrive in it. I would hope this shows through the people I meet, the friends I make, and the work I produce. Consequently, I have thrown myself into the things I find important, because after all, that's what I'm here for.

But it's also important for me not to lose sight of who I am and the things Hawaii has taught me in the process.
It's equally important to find a balance. To find peace. To take time for myself. To observe the town I live in beyond the constructs of my own perceptions, and let the people I meet do the talking.

So, that's where this comes in. For the next eight or nine weeks (at least), I intend to use this blog as a platform to go back to my roots and find more of a balance toward a healthier, brighter, and more enlightened life. For at least once a week, I'd like to stop the clock and find a little "Hawaii" in Mid-Missouri. This means meeting more people who aren't like me - and learning from them. Doing things I'm not used to doing - and learning from that. This might be through books, or through food, or through music. Through anything really!

I also hope to use this platform to reveal a little more about Hawaii beyond the constructs of the glitz and glamour of Hawaii 5-0 and whatever else you people watch. No, I don't do hula. No, I don't surf (have tried - failed miserably). And no, not everything with pineapple on it is Hawaiian.

Most importantly, I'd like to see this blog as a record of growth and progression during perhaps the one semester that calls for these things the most.

Thanks for listening :-)

-Aleissa