I live in Honolulu now, having finally come to this distant island after living in Portland, Oregon for most of my adult life. There seems to be very little literary life here, as few authors make the trip across the ocean on their book tour or to give a talk at a lecture series. Barnes & Noble and Borders have a few stores in the area but as far as I can tell only one independent bookstore has managed to survive. I have been told there are a few local writers, but they are not well known to me, which is truly of no importance.
However, I recently learned that of three writers whose work I have read in The New Yorker magazine and on its blog, The Book Bench, spent their youth in Hawaii—Allegra Goodman, Ligaya Mishan, and Tara Bray Smith. We must also add Barack Obama who may very well be the most widely read author in the US and perhaps the world right now.
When I first came here, I worried that literature would disappear from my life, that I would run out of books to read or ideas to investigate. No, that has not happened in spite of all the warm sunny days and sandy beaches. To the contrary, I am learning what a remarkable place Hawaii is and ever so slowly coming to understand what it means to live in such a racially diverse community, one that is so widely different from anything I have known before.
In writing about how Obama’s Hawaiian experience might shape his presidency, as well as her own experiences growing up here, Allegra Goodman notes that she was also a student in the same school, Punahou, that Obama attended. She also says that her fifth grade teacher, Mrs Hefty, was the one Obama named as his favorite teacher “for her ability to make every single child feel special,” which to Goodman means “singular.”
She writes: “Mrs. Hefty’s students were Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, Korean, Tongan, white, and more often that that, hapa, a combination of many races and traditions. On the surface, our classroom looked like a melting pot. A girl with honey blond hair, café-au-lait skin, and green eyes might say proudly, “I’m part Hawaiian, part Portuguese, part Chinese, and part Irish.”
And then echoing a feeling I often experience here she writes: “What did it mean to live in Hawaii—especially for those of us who had no native Hawaiian ancestry? Were we immigrants? Invaders? Americans?” At times I do feel a bit out of place here until I realize, no one is really out of place here even though we all have to struggle to find just what that place is.
Later Goodman comments “To envision a world where racial identity is more fluid, where men and women are more mobile, and where segregation is a thing of the past is not to envision a post-racial world. Obama knows this, as anyone who has lived in Hawaii must.”
At the same time, she appreciates the considerable benefits that living in a community as complex and diverse as Honolulu can be to a leader in the contemporary world. As we have come to know him, it is clear that everything Obama has done and said reflects the experiences he had here.
Similarly, in interviewing Tara Bray Smith, Ligaya Misha asks how Obama’s Hawaiian experiences might influence the country during the course of his presidency. Smith replies:
“Obama embodies America at its best: a country where the concepts of native and foreigner, “pure” and “mixed,” black and white, hapa and hundred per cent are so complex that the claim of belonging because of blood quantum or family tree must be set against the argument that what defines an American is not the place of the circumstances of his birth but his allegiance to his country’s laws and ideas. Hawaii, by virtue of its exceptionally diverse population, is a place where these questions are explicit.”
What a refreshing change this will be if these questions are widely asked throughout this country. They are questions that I, for one, had not imagined giving much thought to once I moved here. Now they are unavoidable.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
1.28.2009
1.18.2009
The Influence of Place
I write about place again. Are we shaped by the places where we have lived? Can the cities and countries where we have spent some time influence the sort of person we become? These questions loom large in my thinking about the role of place in our life.
In the Opinion section of The New York Times this morning six writers ask how Barack Obama has been influenced by the places in which he has lived—Indonesia, Honolulu, Chicago and Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Universities.
The editors write: “We are shaped by the places we have lived. And Barack Obama has lived in a lot of different places. His memoir “Dreams from My Father” recounts formative years spent in Indonesia, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York City, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago. How might these places have helped to mold the man who will be the next president of the United States? What might he have taken away from, say, Jakarta in 1967? Or Columbia University? Six writers who lived where Mr. Obama lived—when he lived there—reflect on those questions.”
Endy Bayuni writes that “Anyone going to a public school in Jakarta would have had early exposure to a vast array of cultures.” By “growing up respecting cultural and religious differences probably helped pare him for his return to the United States, a society still divided by race.”
Lois-Ann Yamanaka writes that he was similarly affected by the years in spent in Honolulu where the cultures are both diverse and stratified. Margot Miffin suggests that the years he spent at Occidental College taught him the key values the college promoted—critical thought and social justice.
At Columbia where he completed his undergraduate degree, Kevin Baker suggests Obama read everything he could get his hands on and that being in New York “taught Barack Obama how indomitable people can be, even in a city that has been written off…It was a poorer town then, a harder one, but still a place of vaulting ambition, of indelible beauty. We thought we could do anything. We felt such pride to be there.”
John Matteson writes that the major lessons Obama learned at Harvard Law were “the finitude of one’s own powers; the twin, paradoxical necessities of self-reliance and interdependence; and the humanity that comes when one finds oneself a long way from perfection, and then finds new ways of striving….He appears to have learned that he, to a degree quite rare, possessed the confidence, the serenity and the supreme resilience to accomplish goals to which he may have feared he was not equal.”
Finally, Aleksandar Hemon his days in Chicago surely taught Obama the “gruff solidarity of survival [that] is an essential part of living in Chicago….What Mr. Obama should have learned living in Chicago is that it takes far more than gut feeling and bulling, far more than fuzzy-warm nationalism and fantasies of greatness, to run a country as vast and complicated as Chicago is a city.”
Indeed, each of these authors conclude more generally that place exerts its influence in terms of what a person learns from the most salient features where he or she has lived. Perhaps what makes Barack Obama’s experiences so distinctive is that he has lived in an extremely wide variety of places, places where he has been exposed to situations that have given him the opportunity to learn a rare combination of extraordinarily valuable lessons. He has clearly learned them well.
In the Opinion section of The New York Times this morning six writers ask how Barack Obama has been influenced by the places in which he has lived—Indonesia, Honolulu, Chicago and Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Universities.
The editors write: “We are shaped by the places we have lived. And Barack Obama has lived in a lot of different places. His memoir “Dreams from My Father” recounts formative years spent in Indonesia, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York City, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago. How might these places have helped to mold the man who will be the next president of the United States? What might he have taken away from, say, Jakarta in 1967? Or Columbia University? Six writers who lived where Mr. Obama lived—when he lived there—reflect on those questions.”
Endy Bayuni writes that “Anyone going to a public school in Jakarta would have had early exposure to a vast array of cultures.” By “growing up respecting cultural and religious differences probably helped pare him for his return to the United States, a society still divided by race.”
Lois-Ann Yamanaka writes that he was similarly affected by the years in spent in Honolulu where the cultures are both diverse and stratified. Margot Miffin suggests that the years he spent at Occidental College taught him the key values the college promoted—critical thought and social justice.
At Columbia where he completed his undergraduate degree, Kevin Baker suggests Obama read everything he could get his hands on and that being in New York “taught Barack Obama how indomitable people can be, even in a city that has been written off…It was a poorer town then, a harder one, but still a place of vaulting ambition, of indelible beauty. We thought we could do anything. We felt such pride to be there.”
John Matteson writes that the major lessons Obama learned at Harvard Law were “the finitude of one’s own powers; the twin, paradoxical necessities of self-reliance and interdependence; and the humanity that comes when one finds oneself a long way from perfection, and then finds new ways of striving….He appears to have learned that he, to a degree quite rare, possessed the confidence, the serenity and the supreme resilience to accomplish goals to which he may have feared he was not equal.”
Finally, Aleksandar Hemon his days in Chicago surely taught Obama the “gruff solidarity of survival [that] is an essential part of living in Chicago….What Mr. Obama should have learned living in Chicago is that it takes far more than gut feeling and bulling, far more than fuzzy-warm nationalism and fantasies of greatness, to run a country as vast and complicated as Chicago is a city.”
Indeed, each of these authors conclude more generally that place exerts its influence in terms of what a person learns from the most salient features where he or she has lived. Perhaps what makes Barack Obama’s experiences so distinctive is that he has lived in an extremely wide variety of places, places where he has been exposed to situations that have given him the opportunity to learn a rare combination of extraordinarily valuable lessons. He has clearly learned them well.
1.02.2009
New Liberalism
I have been a lifelong reader of The New Yorker. The magazine has changed so much since I began reading it, but I still go carefully through each issue. It plays an important part in my reading life. See the first essay at http://www.the-essayist.com/literary.
I don't save each issue any more but I have kept the November 17, 2008 issue that is a celebration and analysis of the election of Barack Obama and what it might mean for this once powerful nation. The essay The New Liberalism by George Packer was among the most memorable pieces in the issue.
As the New Year begins and as so many individuals are optimistic about the changes it will bring, I thought I would cite a few of the passages from Packer’s piece that lays out his own and others perspective on the years ahead.
The Journal's [Wall Street Journal] nightmare scenario of America under President Obama and a Democratic Congress included health care for all, a green revolution, expanded voting rights, due process for terror suspects, more powerful unions, financial regulation, and a shift of the tax burden upward.
The phrase...deliberative democracy appears in The Audacity of Hope, where it denotes a conversation among adults who listen to one another, who attempt to persuade one another by means of argument and evidence, and who remain open to the possibility that they could be wrong.
In Kuttner's [Robert Kuttner] view, nothing short of a return to New Deal-style government intervention will be enough to prevent the dire economy from Dooming Obama's Presidency.
"All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified." Franklin Roosevelt
...a liberal "works to control the processes of change, to the end that the break with the old pattern may not be too violent." Franklin Roosevelt
"Obama will need to be a more radical president than he was a presidential candidate." Robert Kuttner
"...deep cynicism in the public about the capacity of government to do anything big and well." Robert Reich
The new era that is about to begin under President Obama will be more about public good than about private goods. The meal will be smaller, and have less interesting flavors, but it will be shared more fairly. The great American improvisation called democracy still bends along the curve of history. It has not yet finished astounding the world.
I don't save each issue any more but I have kept the November 17, 2008 issue that is a celebration and analysis of the election of Barack Obama and what it might mean for this once powerful nation. The essay The New Liberalism by George Packer was among the most memorable pieces in the issue.
As the New Year begins and as so many individuals are optimistic about the changes it will bring, I thought I would cite a few of the passages from Packer’s piece that lays out his own and others perspective on the years ahead.
The Journal's [Wall Street Journal] nightmare scenario of America under President Obama and a Democratic Congress included health care for all, a green revolution, expanded voting rights, due process for terror suspects, more powerful unions, financial regulation, and a shift of the tax burden upward.
The phrase...deliberative democracy appears in The Audacity of Hope, where it denotes a conversation among adults who listen to one another, who attempt to persuade one another by means of argument and evidence, and who remain open to the possibility that they could be wrong.
In Kuttner's [Robert Kuttner] view, nothing short of a return to New Deal-style government intervention will be enough to prevent the dire economy from Dooming Obama's Presidency.
"All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified." Franklin Roosevelt
...a liberal "works to control the processes of change, to the end that the break with the old pattern may not be too violent." Franklin Roosevelt
"Obama will need to be a more radical president than he was a presidential candidate." Robert Kuttner
"...deep cynicism in the public about the capacity of government to do anything big and well." Robert Reich
The new era that is about to begin under President Obama will be more about public good than about private goods. The meal will be smaller, and have less interesting flavors, but it will be shared more fairly. The great American improvisation called democracy still bends along the curve of history. It has not yet finished astounding the world.
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