Hawai'i Is My Haven : Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific

Hawaiʻi Is My Haven maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands. This ethnography emerges from a decade of fieldwork with both Hawaiʻi-raised Black locals and Black transplants who moved to the Islands from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Nitasha Tamar Sharma highlights the paradox of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial paradise and site of unacknowledged antiBlack racism. While Black culture is ubiquitous here, African-descended people seem invisible. In this formerly sovereign nation structured neither by the US Black/White binary nor the one-drop rule, nonWhite multiracials, including Black Hawaiians and Black Koreans, illustrate the coarticulation and limits of race and the native/settler divide. Despite erasure and racism, nonmilitary Black residents consider Hawaiʻi their haven, describing it as a place to “breathe” that offers the possibility of becoming local. Sharma's analysis of race, indigeneity, and Asian settler colonialism shifts North American debates in Black and Native studies to the Black Pacific. Hawaiʻi Is My Haven illustrates what the Pacific offers members of the African diaspora and how they in turn illuminate race and racism in “paradise.” "Hawaiʻi Is My Haven is the first ethnography of Hawaiʻi's Black residents, providing a contemporary and on-the-ground documentation that expands historical and military histories of the Black Pacific. Drawing from a decade of fieldwork, it addresses two questions: What does the Pacific offer people of African descent? And what perspectives do Black people bring to help us better understand the Islands? Based on interviews with sixty civilian Black residents, including Hawaiʻi-born locals and transplants to the Islands, it engages debates in Black and Native Studies, Asian settler colonialism, and critical mixed race studies"-- Provided by publisher Opening Poem: "Who is the Black woman in Hawaii?" / by Kathryn Takara -- Introduction: Hawaiʻi is my Haven -- Over two centuries : the history of Black people in Hawaiʻi -- "Saltwater Negroes" : Black locals, multiracialism, and expansive Blackness -- "Less pressure" : Black transplants, settler colonialism, and a racial lens -- Racism in Paradise : antiblack racism and resistance in Hawaiʻi -- Embodying Kuleana : negotiating Black and Native positionality in Hawaiʻi "Nitasha Tamar Sharma maps the context and contours of Black life in Hawaiʻi, showing how despite the presence of anti-Black racism, the state's Black residents consider it to be their haven from racism."-- Provided by publisher