Hawai’i Is My Haven: Race and Ingenuity in the Black Pacific

FAIN: DR-288439-23

Duke University (Durham, NC 27705-4677)
Dean J. Smith (Project Director: April 2022 to May 2024)

Hawai’i Is My Haven maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands. This ethnography emerges from a decade of fieldwork with both Hawai’i-raised Black locals and Black transplants who moved to the Islands from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Nitasha Tamar Sharma highlights the paradox of Hawai’i as a multiracial paradise and site of unacknowledged anti-Black racism. While Black culture is ubiquitous here, African-descended people seem invisible. In this formerly sovereign nation structured neither by the US Black/White binary nor the one-drop rule, non-White multiracials, including Black Hawaiians and Black Koreans, illustrate the coarticulation and limits of race and the native/settler divide. Despite erasure and racism, nonmilitary Black residents consider Hawai’i their haven, describing it as a place to “breathe” that offers the possibility of becoming local.

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Hawai’i Is My Haven: Race and Ingenuity in the Black Pacific
Year: 2021
ISBN: 9781478021667
Publisher: Duke University Press
Author: Nitasha Tamar Sharma
Abstract: Hawaiʻi Is My Haven maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands. This ethnography emerges from a decade of fieldwork with both Hawaiʻi-raised Black locals and Black transplants who moved to the Islands from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Nitasha Tamar Sharma highlights the paradox of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial paradise and site of unacknowledged antiBlack racism. While Black culture is ubiquitous here, African-descended people seem invisible. In this formerly sovereign nation structured neither by the US Black/White binary nor the one-drop rule, nonWhite multiracials, including Black Hawaiians and Black Koreans, illustrate the coarticulation and limits of race and the native/settler divide. Despite erasure and racism, nonmilitary Black residents consider Hawaiʻi their haven, describing it as a place to “breathe” that offers the possibility of becoming local. Sharma's analysis of race, indigeneity, and Asian settler colonialism shifts North American debates in Black and Native studies to the Black Pacific. Hawaiʻi Is My Haven illustrates what the Pacific offers members of the African diaspora and how they in turn illuminate race and racism in “paradise.”
Primary URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2925/Hawai-i-Is-My-HavenRace-and-Indigeneity-in-the
Primary URL Description: Duke University Press
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478021667
Secondary URL Description: DOI for Duke University Press
URL 3: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/oa_monograph/book/85168
URL 3 Description: Project Muse
Type: Single author monograph

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