Kawai Strong Washburn
Autor de Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Obras de Kawai Strong Washburn
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 20th century
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- USA
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Honoka'a, Hawaii, USA
- Lugares de residencia
- Hāmākua coast, Big Island, Hawaii, USA
Washington, D. C. USA
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - Ocupaciones
- writer
software engineer - Agente
- Duvall Osteen (Aragi)
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
Premios
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 3
- También por
- 2
- Miembros
- 698
- Popularidad
- #36,254
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 37
- ISBNs
- 32
- Idiomas
- 4
- Favorito
- 1
What worked is its examination of familial dynamics, especially amongst siblings. Though they naturally love all their three children, Malia and Augie view their middle child, son Nainoa, as something a bit special. To be fair they have a good reason: early on in his life he fell overboard during a family cruise and was gently cradled in the mouth of a shark as it swam to return him to the boat, and from childhood he seems to have something of a miraculous ability to heal people of illness. It was always going to be a challenge for his parents not to treat him a bit differently than they do their other son and daughter. But from the specifics of a particular case one can pull back to see a generalizable set of attitudes and feelings present in many families, whatever the specific details in any one of them.
The apparent favoritism of their parents for their brother has a corrosive effect on older brother Dean and younger sister Kaui; how could it not? They struggle with resentment towards their parents and towards Nainoa, with feelings of lesser self-worth, with envy and anger and depression and guilt all in an inner roil. There's a heartbreaking scene where Kaui asks her mother if she would miss her as much as Nainoa if she were dead, told from Malia's viewpoint:
The other big thing this novel is doing, which I didn't appreciate as much, is incorporating indigenous Hawaiian mysticism. This surprised me because I generally have a lot of time for elements of magical realism, folklore, the supernatural, and so on, and thought ahead of time that I would enjoy that aspect of this novel. Unfortunately for me however it read as woo-woo. It is particularly egregious near the end of the novel. Augie has been in mental and physical decline for some time, appearing to suffer from advanced dementia. Turns out he just needed to stick his head into some native plants on an ecologically conscious small farm Kaui is working at (here told from Malia's viewpoint):
This just doesn't work for me. I get that Washburn is working on themes of colonization and expropriation and indigenous alienation from native land and traditions in the modern world and the power of native wisdom still there for rediscovery by its genetic inheritors, but as literature I'm not into this part of the novel. Turns out I think I would have liked the novel better as a work of straight up realism.
There are other positive aspects of this novel not yet touched on in which it engages with important issues, including: economic oppression of the working class, particularly among racial minorities; the common lack of a support network for first generation college students, again particularly among racial minorities; sexual orientation and related prejudices; and fireworks safety. Ok, that last one is maybe a bit of a stretch.… (más)