Dimensions
137 x 222 x 23mm
The Hawaii of the travel brochures is a lush tropical destination for millions of visitors every year. But the familiar image of a Pacific paradise barely scratches the surface of the rich history and fascinating culture of the real Hawaii - and in this evocative, eclectic, and unfailingly engaging book, novelist Susanna Moore shows us a hidden realm no tourist is likely to see.
She interweaves her own memories of growing up in Honolulu in the 1950s and '60s with a concise chronicle of Hawaii's two-hundred-year encounter with the West - from the great explorer Captain Cook to the American missionaries who followed in his wake to the nineteenth-century haole landowners whose enormous plantations and close-knit society reshaped island life.
By turns a sweeping, romantic tale of native kings and ancient ritual and a vividly drawn, personal memoir of a world that is now all but gone, 'I Myself Have Seen It' unfolds against a fascinating backdrop of Polynesian myth whose ocean spirits and fire gods still cast powerful spells.
