Waikiki Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture (Sport and Society)

By: Patrick Moser

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Synopsis: Despite a genuine admiration for Native Hawaiian culture, white Californians of the 1930s ignored authentic relationships with Native Hawaiians. Surfing became a central part of what emerged instead: a beach culture of dressing, dancing, and acting like an Indigenous people whites idealized. Patrick Moser uses surfing to open a door on the cultural appropriation practiced by Depression-era Californians against a backdrop of settler colonialism and white nationalism. Recreating the imagined leisure and romance of life in Waikīkī attracted people buffeted by economic crisis and dislocation. California-manufactured objects like surfboards became a physical manifestation of a dream that, for all its charms, emerged from a white impulse to both remove and replace Indigenous peoples. Moser traces the rise of beach culture through the lives of trendsetters Tom Blake, John “Doc” Ball, Preston “Pete” Peterson, Mary Ann Hawkins, and Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison while also delving into California’s control over images of Native Hawaiians via movies, tourism, and the surfboard industry. Compelling and innovative, Waikīkī Dreams opens up the origins of a defining California subculture.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 316 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780252088018
Related ISBNs:: 9780252045912
Publisher:: University of Illinois Press
Date of Addition:: 06/11/24
Copyrighted By:: by Patrick J. Moser
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Sports, Travel, Business and Finance, Social Studies, Sociology
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.