Surrounded by Spirits: Hauntings of Identity in Waimea Summer by John Dominis Holt
Surrounded by Spirits: Hauntings of Identity in Waimea Summer by John Dominis Holt
Author(s): Alexander CaseySubject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Gender Studies, Studies of Literature, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Philology, American Literature
Published by: Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: coming-of-age literature; Gothic fiction; Hawaiian literature; John Dominis Holt; Pacific literatures; Waimea Summer; queer theory
Summary/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.
Journal: Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura
- Issue Year: 2/2020
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 78-91
- Page Count: 14
- Language: English