NONFICTION: HISTORY
Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
Reading Sarah Vowell can be like sitting in on a really good high-school American history lecture.
She’s clear. She’s funny. She makes memorable connections between dusty facts and great moments in contemporary culture that tantalize her pupils/ audience into diving in more deeply after the 45-minute class is over.
The trouble is, her rapier wit, honed in a decade of contributing long-form reported commentary to radio’s “This American Life,” loses a lot of its allure when drawn into book form.
“Unfamiliar Fishes,” Vowell’s third American history and sixth book, hooked me into taking a 190-year look at Hawaiian culture and politics with a deft explanation of plate lunch, the island midday meal standard. Why is there a scoop of macaroni salad fraternizing with Japanese chicken in a takeout box from President Barack Obama’s nostalgic favorite Waikiki drive-in, she asks rhetorically? Because, she explains, next to nothing that remains on the archipelago is native, hinting that the culinary mix and match is symbolic of the way Hawaiian culture evolved during decades of sociopolitical incursion.
The book takes its name from the writings of David Malo, a native teacher and preacher who aided in the Americanization of Hawaii but lamented in his later years that his people had been devoured by a wave of “large and unfamiliar fishes.”
Vowell traces that wave from its first ripple in 1819, when New England missionaries set sail from Boston to 2009, when a song written by Hawaii’s last queen is sung to Hawaii-born Obama during his inaugural parade.
In between, we get tastes of how the rich and fecund tropical society willingly ceded to the missionary sensibilities its culture and identity, and, ultimately, its land.
It is a compelling enough concept. But as I was force-reading through the sticky middle parts of the book, I realized that for all my fangirl attitudes about Vowell — I love her, really, really love her — this book ran the risk of suffering the same fate as her two previous histories: half-read on the nightstand.
The book seems carefully researched, looking to previous scholarship and memoirs, original documents and oral interviews with living Hawaiians.
But the narrative thread stitches back on itself again and again. And at times it is tangled up in smarty-pants asides that border on the absurd. (But OF COURSE reading about Sen. Jeff Sessions calling out then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for referring to herself as a “wise Latina woman” immediately reminds Vowell of the Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens on Maui, which honors the architecture of the island’s original inhabitants and immigrants. I read that part four times and am still scratching my head.)
I found myself wishing someone had told her to knock off some of the griping about the prudish, churchy attitudes of Protestant missionaries and cut back on the painfully detailed recollections of the culturally imperialistic theories of just about every white person sent to Hawaii to do whatever they were sent to do. I wanted more depth of reporting about the military/strategic value of Hawaii, and just plain more about the complex and evolving economic relationship between the islands and the mainland.
As much as “Unfamiliar Fishes” seems to want to be a lively but serious history, I am left feeling like it is best consumed in small chunks. I can’t say I didn’t learn a lot from Vowell’s quick ride through Hawaiian history. But I also can’t say I had much fun doing it.
Dana Coffield: dcoffield@ or 303-954-1954
