Words Matter

Gary Pak: Interview by Brenda Kwon

Growing up in Hawai‘i is an experience that is often difficult to explain, although Gary Pak does a pretty good job. The way he sees it, there are racial divisions there like anywhere else, but you don’t have to go around with your ethnicity “on a picket sign.” In The Watcher of Waipuna, you see Rosita, a Hawaiian mahu (homosexual) descended from ali‘is (Hawaiian royalty); Tats Sugimura, a Japanese potato farmer; and Marianne DeSilva, a Portuguese teenager who gives birth to a child surrounded by suspicions of God and the devil. But Pak’s stories aren’t about pâkès (Chinese), yobos (Korean), pilipinos, japanee, portugee, Hawaiians, or haoles (white person; lit., “foreigner”). They’re about the ways people in Hawai‘i relate to one another amid a landscape of colonialism, war, the struggle for land rights, and the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty . They observe how communities form in Hawai‘i and the way locals interact with one other, whether it be over the building of a freeway or the rumblings of a volcano. Above all, you get the sense that, in trying to understand it all, Gary Pak’s just trying to tell a good story. And he does. 17 Gary Pak Interview by B R E N D A K W O N Besides The Watcher of Waipuna, Gary Pak has published several short pieces, including “Catching a Big Ulua” and an excerpt from Children of a Fire Land. At the time of this interview, his novel A Ricepaper Airplane was still in progress, but the novel has since been published (1998). He teaches at the Kapi‘olani Community College and lives with his wife and three children in Kâne‘ohe. B K When did you begin to write, and how did you decide to become a writer? G P Seriously, it was 1980, when my first son was born. Before that, I used to write poetry and stories, but it was more like a hobby or something to get off my chest. But to commit it to paper, to revise it and get things published, that wasn’t until 1980. There were many stories to be told in Hawai‘i, in my family, in the community, and they were important stories. Looking at my son who was just born, I felt that maybe we should write these stories down, commit them to paper, so that my son and others would be able to read them and have that as part of their cultural experience. B K Have your children read The Watcher of Waipuna? What do they think about it? G P My oldest son has read it cover to cover. He likes it. In fact, one of his projects in school for English was to write a short story, and he used my first story, “The Gift,” as his model. He changed it around, of course. My other son has read parts of the collection. My younger daughter is too young, I think. She can read, but mostly Dr. Seuss books. B K Do you feel you’re writing mostly for them? Who do you see as your audience? G P As a writer I’m coming from a certain community that speaks and thinks a certain way, but I’m writing for a broad 304 Words Matter audience, for whoever wants to read it. I’m not necessarily writing for the person who lives down the street from me, although, if that person reads my stories, he or she might come to me and say, “Hey, I understand what you’re saying.” The identification, the unity, is very strong in Hawai‘i. When I’m writing a story, I guess the audience must touch my mind, but it’s not a conscious thing on my part. It sounds simplistic, but, when I’m sitting down with my computer, I’m just trying to tell a story: a beginning, a middle, an end. I think a lot of writers do that; they just try to write the best story that they can, and, whatever it takes to write the best story, they’ll do it. B K So you don’t necessarily take into account a split between local and “mainland” audiences when you write? G P Well, there is a difference because the local audience is going to pick things up right away. I was talking...