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with visual acuity interpret something written. And, to me, that becomes kind of the first interpretation of the text: the cover. And even if you don’t quite “get it” [laughs], it draws you in a particular direction. So that’s really been kind of a wonderful gift from the whole project.
WC: I haven’t had a chance to read any of Taitano’s work, but the theme of being hapa, especially on the mainland, and not feeling like you belong to either community is one that a lot of people in Hawaiʻi have experienced themselves or can relate to. One of our own writers for INhonolulu, for her master’s project, created a collection of poetry that has a lot to do with growing up and living as a half-Japanese and half-white woman in Hawaiʻi. Why do you think that’s such an important issue to talk about, and how does poetry in particular lend itself to questions of identity?
SS: Poetry thrives on problems—that’s where poetry comes from a lot of the time. And identity problems are really important to people. And this is an interesting thing about Tinfish—except for the Jack London book, I don’t think of Tinfish as being about ethnic identity. In fact, I would rather let go of that, but I can’t because everybody’s writing about it. So what I’m trying to do is put people in conversations. So, let’s think about being a Kelsey Amos or a
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Perspective:
"I always had huge identity issues, and I think it’s almost inevitable in a publication like ours, in a region like ours, that various forms of “hapaness”—the real form and the metaphorical forms—become really significant."