My Technicolor Journey: Part 1
During my formative years, I was heavily influenced by my quiet but steady entrepreneurial, straight-ticket-Republican, stock-market-watching grandfather whose bold wife killed bugs with her bare hands and knew no fear. She was dead set on naming my dad with an American name, partially ashamed of her own history as an orphan, but also driven by success and forward progress. I do not remember feeling different about other peoples, but was struck with the Hawaiian terms for white people: Haole, and the word for half: “hapa,” which was used for children who are half white and half Hawaiian, or really just those cute kids who you couldn’t really identify their ancestry by looking and listening. Continue reading My Technicolor Journey: Part 1