Kiana Davenport |
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 Biography
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Davenport, Kiana. Shark Dialogues. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Davenport creates a world between history and imagination in this novel. Its story is based upon a Hawaiian family descending from a Yankee sailor and a Tahitian chieftain. The granddaughter Pono, who now has four granddaughters of her own, summons the girls to her plantation to tell them the secrets behind their family history. Pono tells the story of Hawaii, its islands, and the water that surrounds them. Shark Dialogues is the story of not only the islands, but of the people, the history, and the descendents of a shipwrecked Yankee sailor and a runaway Tahitian.
Davenport, Kiana. Song of the Exile. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
This novel by Kiana Davenport is about two lovers, Keo and Sunny, in the 1930s who travel through Hawaii, New Orleans, and Paris with Keo’s jazz band. These lovers along with the rest of the world, soon find themselves amidst a world war. Davenport describes each lover’s journey during these fateful years of World War II as they are separated by the German Nazi’s. She depicts a prevailing love between Keo and Sunny while telling a powerful story about our world’s history during those years of war.
Pennybacker, Mindy. "Decolonizing the Mind." Nation. 1999. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. U of Minnesota - Twin Cities. 30 Mar. 2005
Pennybacker wrote an article that focuses on several books related to Hawaiian natives such as Kiana Davenport and Haunani-Kay Trask. She writes of the ending of the 19thCentury, Hawaii’s first American century. Native Hawaiian’s at this time are among the poorest, unhealthiest, and least educated citizens of a state where food and housing costs are among the highest in the U.S. Pennybacker incorporates Hawaii’s history as told by these native Hawaiian authors into history as it is told by historians.
Toyosato, Mayumi. “Land and Hawaiian Identity: Literary Activism in Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues” New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Glynis Carr. London: Associated University Presses, 2000. 71-81.
Toyosato’s argument in this article is that Kiana Davenport, in her novel Shark Dialogues, shows a very clear understanding of the history of Hawaii and its community. She says that Davenports story creates “a ground for the continuity of Hawaiian culture, and a deep attachment to the land and a sense of environmental crisis” (71). Toyosato delves even further to say that this attention to local history has been around for a long time in Hawaiian literature. She speaks of nationalism and native culture while arguing that Davenport rereads Hawaiian history in terms of native values.
Oxford’s English Dictionary defines history as the “branch of knowledge which deals with past events, as recorded in writings or otherwise ascertained; the formal record of the past, especially of human affairs or actions; the study of the formation and growth of communities and nations” (1). Kiana Davenport, on the other hand, defines history in her own way. Though her stories do indeed deal with past events that are recorded in writings, her way of telling them is far from a formal record. She tells of one Hawaiian family’s experiences in such a way that the reader learns the history of Hawaii without even realizing it.
The central character of this novel is Pono, who has summoned her four granddaughters to her home in Hawaii to tell them of her mysterious past. What becomes of this visit is Pono’s story, the family’s story, and Hawaii’s story. Davenport portrays these stories in a series of flashbacks in which she details the events and the state of Hawaii at that point in time. She consistently adds dates to events, displaying this sense of time, concrete or imaginary. Though this novel is written through one family’s story, Davenport is able to educate the reader on Hawaii as a whole by referencing historical events such as World War I. She writes, “One day, swimming on the north shore of Oahu, across the island from Honolulu, Pono looked up at U.S. bombers flying overhead” (172). All one has to do to learn what was going on in Oahu on the day that Pono noticed these bombers, is to look in a history book; or one could simply read this book. Kiana Davenport seems to have an innate ability to surprise the reader with factual information that she has rewritten into her creation, this novel. But does this rewrite portray what people commonly define as history? It is not a history book, but it tells of past events as recorded in writings. A history book is simply a story written by a few people who have researched events and people throughout time. Shark Dialogues is a story written by someone who has lived through these events and whose people are those that are described in history books. Kiana Davenport writes history in a way that is different from what a reader may expect. However, readers many times misinterpret history as the past.
Dictionaries define history as a record of the past, not as the past itself. Thus, any person’s record of the past could be history, and everyone’s history is different. Since Kiana Davenport was given the opportunity to create her own person, her own characters in this novel, it allowed her to tell not only her history, but the history of her people, the history of Hawaii. Mayumi Toyosato argues in her critical article “Land and Hawaiian Identity: Literary Activism in Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues” that Davenport,
reimagines Hawaiian identity by rereading the history and the present social conditions of Hawaiian community in terms of native values, and that her emphasis on the indigenous land-based identity over discourse of blood and her colonization are significant for an understanding of local activism in the Hawaiian Islands. (72)
Toyosato describes Davenport’s ability to create this identity through telling the history of Hawaii. This identity is portrayed through Pono, Vanya, Ming, and all of the other characters through which the story is told. Each of these characters has their own history, but each history is intertwined to create a whole which in turn becomes the history of Hawaii. That may be one way Davenport is able to create her own definition of the word history. There is more to the definition that Davenport explores, however, than a simple record of events.
Oxford’s English Dictionary adds that history is “the study of the formation and growth of communities and nations” (1). Kiana Davenport has painted a portrait of her people and her community. She has studied this community, not through books and essays, but through living and being a part of it. Though her definition includes everything that has happened in the past, what it relies on most is the people. The characters are displayed as most important in the book as well as in the history. This seems to be shown on the very first page of Davenport’s novel in which she tells of Jess’s last words to her grandmother Pono: “Sailors, lepers, opium, spies – with such a family history, how could we by anyt’ing but sluts?” (1). The author uses the word history in the very first sentence of the novel, and she uses it in such a way that leads the reader to expect to hear this history throughout the novel. Indeed that is what the novel is.
One could look in a dictionary, read a history book, or ask a historian for their definition of the word history; one could also ask Kiana Davenport. In fact, it seems you could ask any person you pass on the street and each one would have a different definition, a different story. Everyone has experienced life in a different way and has encountered various people along the way. So to define the word history in such a unanimous way, destroys all individuality a person could have.