Tourism, culture, and reindigenization in Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues and Georgia Ka‘apuni McMillen’s School for Hawaiian Girls

Abstract

Mass tourism is often seen as a central component of globalization and has been widely criticized for its neocolonial affinities and culturally homogenizing effects. This article explores how two novels by authors with native Hawaiian ancestry offer contrasting depictions of tourism’s cultural intersections which problematize straightforward opposition to the industry. Comparing Georgia Ka‘apuni McMillen’s School for Hawaiian Girls (2001) and Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues (1994), it shows how these texts offer different but not incompatible ways of working through paradoxes associated with native negotiations of tourist modernity. Although both novels critique the tourism industry’s exploitative dimensions, they also highlight its contribution to processes of reindigenization, furthering cultural growth. As such they indicate how Hawaiian literature can contribute to a rerouting of postcolonialism that accounts for aspects of global travel’s complex cultural effects.

Keywords:

• tourism
• Hawai‘i
• culture
• reindigenization
• McMillen
• Davenport