I just want to start off by saying that the title is rather weird. While the chapter does go over it, I can’t help but wondering how that influenced the title of the book.

I had a hard time reading this book, mostly due to it having so many hidden meanings and poems. However, I did find it interesting that the main character, Lovey, was a Japanese-American Hawaiian, a group that (from what I have experienced) is talked about even less than native Hawaiians and white people living in Hawaii. Throughout the book, she is bullied due to her heritage, her pidgin dialect, and other aspects of herself. This in-turn makes her want to live more of a haole life, to be able to escape this poverty and discrimination and live a more “normal” family life. She befriends only haole people, she daydreams about marrying a haole and changing her last name, and even plays pretend and acts like she is a haole herself. It isn’t until the end of the book that she learns to love who she is and where she comes from.

In my opinion, the most interesting chapter was the one with the Jahova’s witness teacher. And I feel like it was the most interesting since I couldn’t understand a majority of it. In this chapter, Lovey and her best friend, Jerry, go to see an R-rated horror movie, as well as are seeing their teacher on a regular basis. In the beginning, the teacher gives off some questionable vibes, such as telling Lovey to give her a kiss, though it didn’t have any horror-like theme until after they saw the movie. After, their teacher seems to be like a demon herself, with glowing green lights, her baby crying at exactly 12:07 a.m., and her menacing laugh that the kids equated to the laugh in the movie they saw. I do believe that the story was altered a bit due to their movie experience (and their child-like minds saw it just like a horror movie), but it gets me wondering about what exactly happened. The laugh especially stood out to me since it had been referenced before; was their teacher’s preachings about God make them think like this? Or is there a much dqrker theme in play? In the end, it’s really up to the reader.

After reading this book and hearing the lecture given on the Pacific islands, I am really happy to have learned more about Hawaiian culture and the people. I also feel like it was a small bonus that it related to a country that relates to my major, Japan. In the end, I have a much bigger thirst for knowledge when it comes to the Pasifika.