Description
Book SynopsisNitasha Tamar Sharma maps the context and contours of Black life in Hawai?i, showing how despite the presence of anti-Black racism, the state's Black residents consider it to be their haven from racism.
Trade Review“Highlighting the place of Hawai‘i as a site for analyzing the most pressing cultural, political, and economic currents facing our world, Nitasha Tamar Sharma provides a unique and nuanced view into the complex flows of Islander life while creating new spaces for Black and multiracial voices that are all too frequently silenced. This much-needed work makes an important contribution to theorizing race and indigeneity together in American studies, ethnic studies, African American studies, and Native and Indigenous studies.” -- Ty P. Kawika Tengan, author of * Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai‘i *
“This is an elegantly written, trenchantly argued, and persuasively rendered ethnography of African Americans in Hawai‘i. It is simultaneously a landmark pointing the way to how the United States itself may evolve in the twenty-first century as it comes to resemble, racially and ethnically, the vibrant fiftieth state.” -- Gerald Horne, author of * The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War *
"
Hawaiʻi Is My Haven is an ambitious and original work of scholarship. By focusing on an oft-overlooked demographic, it creates a fuller, more accurate picture of Hawaii’s history." -- Eric Stinton * Honolulu Civil Beat *
"This book will be of interest to scholars of Pacific settlement histories, transnational and ethnocultural identities, colonialism, and indigenous activism. For those teaching Pacific studies courses, this volume adds a new dimension to Hawaiian histories of migration, settler colonization, and multiculturalism, as well as current alignments in social justice movements." -- Michelle Ladwig Williams * Pacific Affairs *
"This is an interesting and important work for scholars in the fields [of Native and Indigenous studies, mixed-race
studies, African American studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.] But for Hawaiian scholars and/or activists invested in a more pono future for Hawai‘i, this book is required reading." -- Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada * Native American and Indigenous Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction: Hawaiʻi Is My Haven 1
1. Over Two Centuries: The History of Black People in Hawaiʻi 37
2. "Saltwater Negroes": Black Locals, Multiracialism, and Expansive Blackness 71
3. "Less Pressure": Black Transplants, Settler Colonialism, and a Racial Lens 120
4. Racism in Paradise: AntiBlack Racism and Resistance in Hawaiʻi 166
5. Embodying Kuleana: Negotiating Black and Native Positionality in Hawaiʻi 217
Conclusion: Identity↔Politics↔Knowledge 261
Notes 279
Bibliography 305
Index 331
