Kuleana

January 1, 2025

Journalist Goo writes about her family's journey to keep their ancestral Hawaiian lands in the face of massive increases in property taxes. She traces the colonial history of the islands alongside her own efforts to reconnect with her past. Prepub Alert.

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April 1, 2025
A quest for justice in a changing Hawai'i. It may well surprise readers to learn, as journalist Goo did, that "there are now more people of Native Hawaiian descent---53 percent of the 680,000--living outside of Hawai'i than in Hawai'i." The reason, Goo writes, is simple: Most native Hawaiians don't earn enough money to live in a place where the average home price is more than $1 million ($1.3 million on Maui). Money propels Goo's narrative, which begins when her alarmed father announces that the state is drastically raising taxes on land held in the family trust after having been granted to an ancestor by the last king of Hawai'i. Arriving at an equitable solution to this bureaucratic problem is just one thread of Goo's narrative, whose larger story is really one of homecoming: Born and raised in California, an East Coast resident for decades, Goo must learn or relearn key points of the people's traditional lifeways. The title of the book speaks to one such point, one's obligation to both place and culture, less a burden, she explains, than a privilege: "For example, certain people had kuleana for growing taro or crops in a certain part of the island, or for taking care of a fishpond or teaching hula." She explores many other concepts as she travels in the company of relatives, who take her, in one instance, to a heiau, or temple, whose purpose is lost to time; says her uncle, "Some people say dey did these tings there like human sacrifice and dat stuff, but we don't know." What is clear is that humans are sacrificed, at least metaphorically, for profit in a Hawai'i made for wealthy outsiders; as Goo laments in closing, "Our culture won't remain unless each generation--grandparent to parent to child to grandchild---keeps it burning." A well-crafted work combining memoir, ethnography, history, and sharp-edged journalism.

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May 1, 2025
To drive the Road to Hana on Maui is to take a verdant and vertiginous voyage through the way the island used to look before the resorts, condos, T-shirt shacks, and tourist ocean liners took over the shoreline. Drivers who snake around 600-plus hairpin curves and play chicken crossing numerous one-lane bridges will traverse land that has been in Goo's family for generations, bestowed upon her ancestors by King Kamehameha III. Now faced with a staggering tax bill, the far-flung, multigenerational Kahanu descendants face losing the property unless they can agree that the kuleana, or responsibility, is something they all want to shoulder. An award-winning journalist and editor at multiple news outlets, Goo shares the story of a threatened land and fading way of life. Beyond having to navigate the morass of bureaucratic red tape required to satisfy an inconsistent tax code, Goo is forced to confront the pervasive erosion of Native Hawaiian culture and contemplate what it means to be a steward for future generations. Passionate about her family heritage, Goo has written a historically and culturally significant memoir.

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