Review: Hokulani K. Aikau. A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Authors

Sujey Vega

Keywords

hokulani aikau, Polynesian, latter-day saints, cultural identity, wa’a kaulua

Abstract

I want to begin by referencing a particularly moving scene depicted in A Chosen People, a Promised Land that speaks to the beauty and hardship of what it means to reclaim faith and culture for one’s own. In her narrative, Hokulani Aikau depicts the 2001 launching of the wa’a kaulua ‘o Iosepa, a voyage canoe made by and for Polynesian Latter-day Saints. Long before it was the “latest attraction” to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), this wa’a served an inspiring purpose. Aikau describes in vivid detail the beachside ceremony and the communal effort to set this majestic canoe into the ocean. Reading of the author’s mother drenched in sea water and renewed by this spiritual connection to the wa’a caused me to set the book down and shed tears. I had never connected to a book, much less a history book, in this manner.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Vega, Sujey (2020) "Review: Hokulani K. Aikau. A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 7: No. 1, Article 11.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol7/iss1/11