Rolling the R's by R. Zamora Linmark
(Kaya Press 20th Anniversary Edition, 2016)
BOOK LINK
[First published as part of "An Impressionistic Social-Intellectual History of R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's on its 20th Anniversary" in The Asian American Literary Review, Spring 2016, Eds. Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis & Gerald Maa]
In 1996, I
became the first instructor to assign R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s
for classroom use. The faculty at Pomona College hired me to teach a course
with a sufficiently boring title of my choosing: “Asian American Cultural
Studies: Reading Nationalism and Life Worlds.” Perfect for an upper division
seminar on Asian American literature.
I assigned
Walter Lew’s anthology of poetry and prose, Premonitions, published by
Kaya Press. Julie Koo, the managing editor at Kaya, suggested I also take a
look at a recently published book by a “young Filipino American writer” from
Hawai‘i. Sure, I said, add it to my order. I loved Linmark’s book. I found it
strange, puzzling, and funky. It sounded like he listened to same music I did.
I don’t think I or my students were quite ready for Rolling. Everyone in
the class was drawn to the pop-cultural references like Charlie’s Angels
(not the one with Lucy Liu in it, I’m talking about the original one) or Joanie
Loves Chachi, and the whip-smart attitudes of the young protagonists. But a
couple of things threw some of the students off. First was heavy use of pidgin.
Not much on the continent’s soundscape sounds anything remotely like it. Zack’s
characters gossiped, joked, and fought—all in their unique patois—
code-switching when necessary. It’s a testament to the author’s ability to draw
in readers who are not used to the cadence or context of pidgin. Second was the
sociocultural dynamics of Filipino experiences in Hawai‘i. My students did
their best to make sense of it: they did a lot of outside homework to learn
about the island’s racial and ethnic hierarchies, the erasure of indigenous
peoples, and the vicious nature of class warfare there.
What I loved
most about the book when I first picked it up twenty years ago was how it was
such a strong antidote to the everyday fantasies that many of us have about
Hawai‘i. When I meet people who ask me about where I’ve lived and worked, I
talk about my nine years in Honolulu. For those who’ve never been there, I can
see their eyes glaze over. It doesn’t take too long for someone to ask a
version of the same question I must have been asked hundreds of times since I
moved away in 2011: “Why would you leave paradise?”
Even today,
there’s no shortage of images that go right to that lizard part of the brain
that conjures durable notions of scantily clad, ethnically ambiguous women
serving umbrella-topped cocktails. Fantasies crash into each other—hypersexualized
natives and militarized police officers—every week, reinforced by the re-boot
of Hawai‘i Five-O. And do we really need to re-hash the weird treatment
of native people in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, where the Allison Ng
character (supposedly of Chinese and Hawaiian descent) was played by the Nordic
Emma Stone?
It’s not
just Hollywood trafficking in this zone. A major function of the state
government is devoted, as you can imagine, to keeping the sacred cow of tourism
well-fed and happy. Tourists—the state government prefers the more inviting
term, visitors—spend about fourteen billion dollars a year on their
trips to Hawai‘i, buying up nearly ten million air seats. And what do you
suppose these visitors do not expect to see when they arrive? How about actual,
everyday people trying to make ends meet in paradise?
Thousands
throughout the state live paycheck to paycheck, cobbling together minimum wage
jobs. How does a line cook who makes $1200 a month survive on $100, after
paying for rent, utilities, food, and other bills? Or what about that waitress
in Kona who works forty hours a week between two jobs, trying to raise two kids
with her bartending husband? Or how about that single parent raising a
fourteen-year-old and a nine-year-old on an administrative assistant’s wage of
$12 an hour? If any of the families are lucky, they might land a spot in
Section 8 housing, but you could see why they wouldn’t bother, given the how
long the waiting list is. Some of the kids have access to the state’s Medicaid
program, but that doesn’t cover the parents, leaving them with a health care
plan that only a conservative could love: hoping (sorry, praying) not to
get sick. Outside of the tourist’s gaze is what you would find in any city:
high cholesterol, low paychecks, broken promises, divorce papers,
passive-aggressive compliments, waiting in traffic, and small talk. The fantasy
industry does more than hope you will never see any of this. The captains of
industry always have a plan: Waikiki, the premiere destination spot for
first-time tourists, is set up so you never have to leave that corner of Oahu.
Do yourself
a favor. If you’ve never visited Hawai‘i or are planning a return, then set
aside skimming the usual guide books. Instead, pick up Zack Linmark’s Rolling
the R’s and get yourself into a conversation with someone about what the
hell he’s writing about. You might find that there’s more humor, soul, and
truth in his fiction than in a hundred guides promising you The Real Hawai‘i.
*****
Theodore S. Gonzalves is the author of several essays and books, including The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora, and co-author of Filipinos in Hawai'i (with Roderick N. Labrador). He is an associate professor of American Studies at the University Maryland, Baltimore County.
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