Hawaii
Honoring Hawaii’s Queen
At a time when statues are toppling across the nation, one work of public art stands tall. It is the eight-foot-tall bronze of Hawaii’s Queen Lili’uokalani, who faces the state Capitol in Honolulu. This beautifully rendered artwork, by the American realist sculptor Marianna Pineda, is even more powerful today than it was when it was…
Read MoreMark Ho’omalu and a “Kingdom Denied”
“Get your papers!” cried the delivery boys and girls, carrying rolled up copies of a Hawaiian newspaper printed especially for that evening’s show. Wearing natty caps and suspenders, they ran through the aisles clutching copies of the “Star of the Pacific,” yelling, “Get your papers!” Thus began an extraordinary one-night performance of the musical “Kingdom…
Read MoreThe Queen and the Clevelands (Grover and George…)
September 2 is the birthday of Hawai’i’s last reigning monarch, Lili’uokalani. Born in a grass house in 1838 and adopted by Hawai’i’s ruling dynasty, the infant girl who would become Hawai’i’s last queen began her tumultuous life 174 years ago at the base of an dormant volcano in Honolulu. For the past several years, historians,…
Read More“The Wave” by Susan Casey
The ancient Polynesians felt profound respect for the power of the sea. Their custom was to carry ti leafs with them when they went on risky journeys. As Susan Casey reports in her masterful book, The Wave, California-born but Hawaii-bred surfing legend Laird Hamilton, perhaps superstitiously, always carries a ti leaf along with him as he…
Read MoreHow an 1863 petition from Ni’ihau re-surfaced in San Francisco
The story begins in November of 1957. The chief photographer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Warren Roll, climbed into the passenger seat of a small plane in Kauai. The pilot took off, heading towards a 73-square-mile privately-owned Hawaiian island of Niihau. The plane landed roughly, smashing its landing gear and splintering its propeller. Roll, carrying his…
Read MoreLunching with One of Hawaii’s Real ‘Descendants’
By Julia Flynn Siler, first published in the Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy blog on 3/12/2012 Julia Flynn Siler and Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa. A few days before heading to Honolulu on book tour for “Lost Kingdom,” I got a phone call from the assistant to Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, the woman…
Read MoreRetracing Lili‘u’s Footsteps…
Purely by chance, I found myself in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where Hawai‘i’s last queen, Lili‘uokalani, had once lived. I was in Washington, D.C. to deliver a talk to a group of Treasury executives about my new book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. I’d booked a hotel…
Read MoreTalking Story at the Outrigger Canoe Club
On my last night in Honolulu on tour for my new book, Lost Kingdom, I was invited for drinks at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which sits at the far end of Waikiki Beach, in the shadow of Diamond Head. The club is a key setting for the novel, The Descendants, which is now an Oscar-winning…
Read MoreBook Group Pick: Lost Kingdom
Mahalo nui loa – Hawaiian for thank you very much! – to the dozen or so book groups I’ve heard from around the country that have picked Lost Kingdom as their monthly or quarterly read. I’m truly grateful to all of you – from Liz Epstein’s Literary Masters groups (10 book groups in the San…
Read MoreSurf’s Up
The famed Mavericks Surf Contest, which takes place in Half Moon Bay, California, is called each year by its organizers only when conditions are right. Last year, the waves were never big enough for the competition to take place. This year, it began on January 3rd, 2012, the same day as the publication date for…
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