Unfamiliar Fishes

Sarah Vowell always manages to take what should be dry, boring sections of history and enliven therm far beyond what I could reasonably expect.

This time the subject is the history of Hawaii, and I can confidently asset that prior to starting this book the extent of my knowledge in that area amounted to “it didn't used to be a state and now it is.” I know much more about how all this came to be, and the only emotion I can muster is sadness.

It's a tight narrative arc, the American interaction with the islands. It took less than a century to get from religious do-gooders genuinely concerned about the Hawaiians to a cabal of businessmen deciding their profits outweighed all other concerns and forcibly overthrew the elected government. I'm sure

The more history I learn, the more I suspect that I don't (and, in many cases, can't) know about any given topic. There are so many layers, characters and narratives swirling around any event that to discover one only inevitably leads you to several more. This is not a reason to discourage such pursuits, merely a reminder about their ultimate lack of finality. Still, the best we can get is closer, and the only way to do that is to keep trying.

I love Sarah Vowell's take on history- her writing is bright, witty, and has a way of making history seem real and relevant without ever being irreverent. In fact, Vowell's respect for the people and places she writes about seeps out of every page. She even seems to have a soft spot for the missionaries in “Unfamiliar Fishes,” those precursors to the land- and sea-hungry Americans who would go on to depose Hawaii's traditional constitutional monarchy.

Vowell takes the modern history of Hawaii (and it's hard to believe that her narrative spans less than 250 years) and connects it to current events, 19th century U.S. politics, her own personal experiences, and even, in a deeply Hawaiian way, to the beginning of time.

I am a huge fan of The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Assassination Vacation (as well as The Incredibles), but I found Vowell's latest book to be plodding and bland. While listening to the audio book I just kept wondering why she chose this subject. As an atheist, a history of 19th century missionaries traveling to and living in Hawaii seems a wildly bizarre choice of topic for Vowell. I don't know much about Hawaii, and I did find parts of her book interesting, such as learning that it was once forbidden for Hawaiian women to eat bananas. I was also somewhat fascinated to learn that Vowell was able to unearth so many facts from historical archives and museums about obscure figures long dead, it is a shame that the objects of her study will probably be of interest to a very narrow population of Hawaiian natives or those interested in American Protestant history.

I clearly learned nothing about Hawaii in school. Now I have learned we (the U.S.) were jerks and that apparently, if you support a coup, without the proper permissions, you don't get in nearly as much trouble as I would have suspected. Complete with the standard Sarah Vowell wit, although, I still say Assassination Vacation was her best work. Maybe it's just the natural truth that presidential assassinations are funnier than missionaries and island nations.