Hapa: The Word of Power by Wei Ming Dariotis
“I presented an earlier version of this paper on November 15th, 2007, at a talk at Occidental College. At the end of my two hours of sharing my research and my poetry—which included a series of “Hapa Poems” written mostly around 2002-2005—a young woman, who identified herself as Native Hawaiian and Japanese American, told me that my use of the word Hapa felt like a violence—like something was being taken away from her—another piece of Hawaii, another piece of Native Hawaiian culture and identity. She reminded me that I am part of this problem, that I am responsible and have influence and power in this dialogue. She was right. So here is the first step—my first attempt to send the word of power into the fire, to be re-forged to serve the community for which it was originally intended—people of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage. A word used to give power to one community, while taking power away from another, is not a word I can use in good conscience. However, I will still slip up, I will still say Hapa to mean people like me the way I still sometimes use sexist language despite 20 years of trying to train myself not to, but I will not read my “Hapa Poems” any more until I can find a way to elegantly revise them [Laura Kina kindly reminds me that perhaps I should simply recognize that these are the works of a particular time period, rather than trying to revise all of my former work to meet a new standard], and I will not use “Hapa” anymore in my academic writings as a shorthand for Asian Americans of mixed heritage.”
(via billierain)
Hapa. A word that only entered my vocabulary 4 years ago. A word that I was always skeptical of because it was a label pinned on me without my own self-determination and before I had a chance to really explore or understand what it meant. It’s the one word that still causes me so much headache and confusion about my identity. But this just added a whole other level of complexity and exposed the privileges and power dynamics that come with language.
