Voices of Fire: Reweaving the Literary Lei of Pele and Hi'iaka (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies)

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Synopsis
Stories of the volcano goddess Pele and her youngest sister Hi&‘iaka, patron of hula, are most familiar as a form of literary colonialism—first translated by missionary descendants and others, then co-opted by Hollywood and the tourist industry. But far from quaint tales for amusement, the Pele and Hi&‘iaka literature published between the 1860s and 1930 carried coded political meaning for the Hawaiian people at a time of great upheaval. Voices of Fire recovers the lost and often-suppressed significance of this literature, restoring it to its primary place in Hawaiian culture. Ku&‘ualoha ho&‘omanawanui takes up mo&‘olelo (histories, stories, narratives), mele (poetry, songs), oli (chants), and hula (dances) as they were conveyed by dozens of authors over a tumultuous sixty-eight-year period characterized by population collapse, land alienation, economic exploitation, and military occupation. Her examination shows how the Pele and Hi&‘iaka legends acted as a framework for a Native sense of community. Freeing the mo&‘olelo and mele from colonial stereotypes and misappropriations, Voices of Fire establishes a literary mo&‘okū&‘auhau, or genealogy, that provides a view of the ancestral literature in its indigenous contexts. The first book-length analysis of Pele and Hi&‘iaka literature written by a Native Hawaiian scholar, Voices of Fire compellingly lays the groundwork for a larger conversation of Native American literary nationalism.
Copyright:
2014

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781452941219
Related ISBNs:
9780816679225
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
University of Minnesota Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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