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Unfamiliar Fishes Sarah Vowell 9781594487873 Books

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Unfamiliar Fishes Sarah Vowell 9781594487873 Books

I love me some Sarah Vowell. This book explains Hawaiian history frankly and fairly and should be required reading for anybody who is planning on visiting any island in the state, especially Maui or Oahu. It offers great backstories to the many historical markers you would normally walk by as a tourist getting to your snorkel boat or Mai Tai. I just moved to Lahaina, and used Sarah's book as part of my own little personal walking tour. I was a little embarrassed to find that I had passed by many markers and historical sites of significance during my 20 years of visiting my most favorite place on earth.


Tags : Unfamiliar Fishes [Sarah Vowell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the bestselling author of <em>The Wordy Shipmates, </em> comes an examination of Hawaii, the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn. <br /><br /> Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history,Sarah Vowell,Unfamiliar Fishes,Riverhead Books,1594487871,9781594487873,Hawaii;Annexation to the United States.,Hawaii;Colonization.,Hawaii;History.,Americanization,Biography & Autobiography Historical,Biography & Autobiography Literary,Colonization,GENERAL,General Adult,HAWAII - LOCAL HISTORY,HISTORY United States 19th Century,HISTORY United States State & Local West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY),Hawaii,History,History - U.S.,History United States General,HistoryAmerican,History: American,IMPERIALISM,InspirationalDevotional,Non-Fiction,United States,United States - 19th Century,United States - State & Local - West

Unfamiliar Fishes Sarah Vowell 9781594487873 Books Reviews

If you want to know how we came to acquire Hawaii, read this. Again Sarah Vowell puts comedy and perspective together to create a real understanding of the Americanization of a distant colonial outpost. Wild and entertaining storytelling.
Vowell looks back at the history of the so-called Sandwich Islands that Captain Cook encountered during the eighteenth century but also better known as the 59th state of the United States Hawaii. After her interest of visiting the USS Arizona Memorial, Vowell unexpectedly found her way to the legendary Iolani Palace known for the last queen of Hawaii Queen Liliuokalani who supported a counterrevolution and locked up for treason but also known for composing the song "Aloha `Oe". Vowell takes note early on in the book how the history of Hawaii has been buried in the past, especially the island's history that pre-dates Pearl Harbor, one tattooed on the American memory and the afternoon at another historic site we have forgotten entirely, the monarchy of Hawaii that included King Kamehameha and Queen Liliuokalani, ( version location 90).

Indeed, history is the highlight of Vowell's book where she narrates and provides as much background to the history of Hawaii that too is a major part of American history that pre-dates what many known about the islands as it relates to World War II. And more so, precedes the annexation of the islands and her neighbors, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as a result of the Spanish American War of 1898. All these events parallel each other in terms of the tumultuous upheavals that took place within the social and political lines of colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and revolution, but the main premise of her examination concentrates on two sources, the Memoirs of Henry Obookiah and Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power Upon History that shows the tremendous affect of colonialism within the islands that ultimately resulted to the end of the monarchy of Hawaii.

In spite of the ironic aspects of this part of American history, Vowell retells a history that attempts to bring understanding that is twofold. Firstly, she distinctively makes parallels to her own personal experience with Hawaii, her visit in 2003 and previous to that, as a teenager, watching the 1987 film North Shore starring Matt Adler who played Rick a surfer who decides to get a true taste of the waves by winning a trip to Hawaii to learn how to surf the native way but in the interim encounters a culture clash between he and the natives. Secondly, two major events in history relating to American missionaries in Hawaii that is contiguous to the landing of Puritans in New England where both represent the Americanization of a region and its people. Hawaii and New England share the common experience of its inhabitants greatly affected by disease and conversion within various forms, natives and settlers within this vast landscape that Vowell describes as the "spiritual wilderness" that missionaries and Puritans sought in their creation of a new world that would later be economically and politically beneficial but not without major transitions taking place.

Unfamiliar Fishes opens one's eyes to the history of the past. With Vowell's blunt approach to examining history, after reading the book there most likely will be more questions to be asked about the history of Hawaii that may entice readers to delve deeper into the history of the United States or other histories that closely relate to what occurred in Hawaii. There is no doubt that the reading and studying of history comes in various dimensions, especially if a bridge of understanding is established over events that have not been retold too often.
I picked this book up because I've read about 4 or 5 of Sarah Vowell's books and enjoyed most of them. To be honest, I didn't care as much for her last one, The Wordy Shipmates, so I was a little less enthusiastic about this one. As it turns out, I was heading to Hawaii on vacation, and soon discovered that this book was completely relevant to that vacation, as it documents the process by which Hawaii was westernized, absorbed, annexed and eventually brought into Statehood by the U.S. of A.

The interesting thing about this book for me was how transparent Sarah Vowell's own indignation shines through. She never seems to fail to mention in her books that her ancestors were on the Trail of Tears, and victims of the oppressive Western Expansion of the mid 19th-century USA. Her acerbic wit and sarcasm is barely tempered, and she makes no bones about her opinion of Manifest Destiny.

And to be honest, I found it a teensy bit harder to enjoy my vacation because of what I learned from the book. The backroom dealings and subversion, the audacious religious zealotry that killed off a good percentage of the Hawaiian population (which itself was certainly not non-violent - but damn that smallpox and VD!) and the steps by which the beautiful Hawaiian paradise was dragged into the Union made me cast withering glances at references to the religious presence on the islands, as well as the references to the benefits of statehood - made by everyone but the native Hawaiian people.

The story itself is quite fascinating in its audacity, and the well-written book is a bit better of a read than the Wordy Shipmates, in my opinion. Vowell does a great job of presenting her information in an informative way, but for some confusing chronological meandering. All in all, quite enjoyable.
In her wry, anecdotal musings on how modern Hawaii was shaped, Sarah Vowell manages to do a better job of examining post-European contact Hawaii than more scholarly books, She is deservedly hard on both missionaries, plantation owners and the Hawaiian alii, but also has a good sense of the travails of each group on the islands. I am a part-time resident of Hawaii and have read stacks of books on the history of Hawaii; most are a combination of boring and biased. Ms. Vowell's treatment is pretty evenhanded. She combines whimsy with facts in a very readable/ listenable format. This is an excellent brief book for a visitor to Hawaii; it is also a great choice to plug into the CD player in your rental car.
My only complaint - she never does explain the omnipresent macaroni salad.
I love me some Sarah Vowell. This book explains Hawaiian history frankly and fairly and should be required reading for anybody who is planning on visiting any island in the state, especially Maui or Oahu. It offers great backstories to the many historical markers you would normally walk by as a tourist getting to your snorkel boat or Mai Tai. I just moved to Lahaina, and used Sarah's book as part of my own little personal walking tour. I was a little embarrassed to find that I had passed by many markers and historical sites of significance during my 20 years of visiting my most favorite place on earth.