kate lilley was super excellent just because the language was funny and dense. something about it was working. i myself couldn't figure it out totally. i was wondering why i was enjoying it so much as i was listening. it made me laugh a lot but not the yuk yuk sort. perhaps example of pure pleasure of play of language.

on kristen's comments... i think you are being too harsh on yedda's work. which i think doesn't claim the biography (this was a comment in class and not a claim made at all in the book). and actually does work on larger, more global issues. which i think is very important. i like her work because it takes on issues very clearly and does not claim a marginality. she doesn't say, as sometimes literature about marginalization/victimization/identity does, that she didn't get enough of the spoils of america.

last night we were talking with catalina about race/class/gender issues in mfa programs. she was talking some about some issues at sfst when she was there. and i was thinking some about some similar moments in hawai'i. the hawai'i moment being when what i felt was a troubling and homophobic story (which i think was just not thought out on part of student; not that it was deliberate on his part) was given a prize by the creative writing program and this was upsetting to me. but i was also thinking about how the answer isn't just to avoid taking on the harder issues of sexuality/race/class/gender by resorting to an ambiguous or personal language. in other words, only talking about one's self/from one's position doesn't let one off these issues.

so i guess, kristen, i want to push you more on the work. what is ok to put in the work and what is not on these issues?

i had to think about this a lot in hawai'i. and i never felt i had _the_ answer. but some things i decided: that even while many people said it was just more colonialism to write about hawai'i when one is not from hawai'i, that to not write about hawai'i's colonial issues was not the solution. that this also was part of the problem. so the question became how to do it. and there were certain things i did not think it would be right to do. like it would not be right for me to write from a hawaiian point of view. or to claim to understand hawaiian culture or religious issues. or to claim that i knew what the right form of sovereignty would be for hawaiians. i don't write fiction, so this one is easy, but i would not write a story with only hawaiian characters or one that took place only in hawaiian communities.

i felt i had to make it clear in the work that i was not from hawai'i. but most importantly, i felt i had to make it clear in the work where i stood on the colonialism issue, that i was against it. and that i supported sovereignty and that it was the right of hawaiians to decide what sorts of government they wanted for their nation.

i would never claim that i avoided the appropriation issue at all. but these were my thoughts on how to negotiate, a negotiation that i always saw as being in progress. and i think that is what this work has to do (this is related some to meg's questions about writing about the mission). i think that one way that writing matters is that it can be a place where one thinks about these issues, thinks about how to talk about these difficult issues. or is written out of these questions.