The Language of Love: Literacy in Hawaii
Siu-Runyon, Yvonne

[Loud background noise of people talking]

>>SPEAKER: It's starting to record. Welcome, why don't you introduce yourself?

>>YVONNE: Hi, I'm Yvonne Siu-Runyon and I'm the vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English and it's a pleasure to be here today. 

>>SPEAKER: You mentioned that you were from Hawaii?

>>YVONNE: Yes I am, born and bred.

>>SPEAKER: So one of the questions I have that I wanted to talk to you about is how the culture of Hawaii has shaped your literacy?

>>YVONNE: Great question, I grew up at a time when there were only two hotels on the island of Oahu and I lived on a rock which was 2400 square miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii is the most isolated part of the world. Fortunately we did have school a lot but unfortunately we did not have school libraries when I was growing up but I went to this wonderful school once a month where parents take the children to the one public library of the whole island. I would go there and I would sit in front of the folk literature section because that was a section where they had books with which I could relate. There was folk literature about the ancient Pacific cultures and legends and myths about Pele and about King Kamehemeha in Maui. So those were the things that I grew up with and I never really read a piece of "real literature" in the classroom until I was a Master's student and of course children's literature started to come into play and I literally fell in love with this book. My literacy was shaped very much by folk literature because those were the books that had characters in them with whom I could relate.

>>SPEAKER: Is there a particular character that you remember?

>>YVONNE: Oh my gosh, I just remember tons and tons of stories of course about Pele and the goddess of fire because the Hawaiian Islands are formed by volcanoes so there are many, many legends about Pele. The other thing that I find very unique about living in the islands is island people speak a dialect of English, it's called Pidgin English. I grew up bi-dialectal and I find that being bi-dialectal or multi-dialectal is like being bilingual or multilingual and I still speak the native tongue where it's English but we use different words from the different cultures of the islands to express ourselves. There are ways in which we express ourselves that cannot be expressed in any other way. So when you ask the children there to read and they will often times recode the text into their dialect. If you ask them to write they will use words from the different languages of the islands in their writings and I love writing that way. For example, when we talk about, the Hawaiian language for example, they don't have a word for being evil and the closest word that they have [Speaking Hawaiian] which means "rascal." So if the children would be talking about the character that does kind of [Inaudible] and they might say, "John is really [Speaking Hawaiian]." Because they use that language in their writing because that's their language, so I wrote that way too. 

>>SPEAKER: Do you still have any of your childhood writings?

>>YVONNE: No I don't but the thing that's really funny is when I would communicate via email with friends or relatives from the islands they will write to me in the local dialect and I will write back to them in the local dialect and it's not easy to do.  

>>SPEAKER: Are you using the English alphabetical language [Inaudible].

>>YVONNE: Yes, isn't crazy? That's amazing.

>>SPEAKER: Is that through email or is that through handwriting?

>>YVONNE: Sometimes it's handwriting, for example if a [Hawaiian word] or elder writes to me they will write out long-hand or will dictate to somebody. If it's a young person who has access to a computer then they will type it out and when I get those stories or their email communications I just take so much pleasure in reading it because there are things that just cannot be expressed any other way accept in the local dialect which we call the language of love. So one of the things that I find to be very important in literacy is you have to give kids or readers things that touch them in a very deep way otherwise they're not going to read. I was just fortunate enough that though we didn't have school libraries I went to a school where the parents took the kids to a public library once a month. I was able to sit in front of the folk literature section and just thumb through books. So literacy is a great gift to people and I remember Patrish Makisick giving a key not address and talking about stories. She says, "Our students need to reach back to learn about their past so that they can reach out to others in order to move forward into the future." I truly believe that. I think everybody has a story to tell. We're all writers and we're all readers. So I wish I had a story that I could - actually if I stop I might be able to find it.

>>SPEAKER: We'll just keep this running and we can always edit it. 

>>YVONNE: Good, I'm glad. I need to find it; it just cracked me up. This was sent to me by a friend from Molika and I'll just read a little bit about it so you can get a sense of the island's language. [Speaking in Hawaiian dialect mostly unintelligible]. Isn't that funny? It's funny and they will write to you in that dialect and they speak perfectly standard English but it's just a way of communicating with someone from the island and letting them know. 

>>SPEAKER: How do you feel in just reading that?

>>YVONNE: I love it. I've read this story six times when I got it and every time when I got it I laughed even harder because it was so island. So I think this is a wonderful project. This is just a wonderful, wonderful project.

>>SPEAKER: Well, thank you. 

>>YVONNE: I want to thank you. 

>>SPEAKER: [Inaudible]

>>YVONNE: Great! Thank you.