Hawai'i Is My Haven

Nitasha Tamar Sharma is Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University, author of Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of Beyond Ethnicity: New Politics of Race in Hawai‘i.

“Highlighting the place of Hawai‘i as a site for analyzing the most pressing cultural, political, and economic currents facing our world, Nitasha Tamar Sharma provides a unique and nuanced view into the complex flows of Islander life while creating new spaces for Black and multiracial voices that are all too frequently silenced. This much-needed work makes an important contribution to theorizing race and indigeneity together in American studies, ethnic studies, African American studies, and Native and Indigenous studies.” - Ty P. Kawika Tengan, author of (Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai'i) “This is an elegantly written, trenchantly argued, and persuasively rendered ethnography of African Americans in Hawai‘i. It is simultaneously a landmark pointing the way to how the United States itself may evolve in the twenty-first century as it comes to resemble, racially and ethnically, the vibrant fiftieth state.” - Gerald Horne, author of (The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War) "Hawaiʻi Is My Haven is an ambitious and original work of scholarship. By focusing on an oft-overlooked demographic, it creates a fuller, more accurate picture of Hawaii’s history." - Eric Stinton (Honolulu Civil Beat) "This book will be of interest to scholars of Pacific settlement histories, transnational and ethnocultural identities, colonialism, and indigenous activism. For those teaching Pacific studies courses, this volume adds a new dimension to Hawaiian histories of migration, settler colonization, and multiculturalism, as well as current alignments in social justice movements." - Michelle Ladwig Williams (Pacific Affairs) "This is an interesting and important work for scholars in the fields [of Native and Indigenous studies, mixed-racestudies, African American studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.] But for Hawaiian scholars and/or activists invested in a more pono future for Hawai‘i, this book is required reading." - Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada (Native American and Indigenous Studies)

• Acknowledgments  xiIntroduction: Hawaiʻi Is My Haven  11. Over Two Centuries: The History of Black People in Hawaiʻi  372. "Saltwater Negroes": Black Locals, Multiracialism, and Expansive Blackness  713. "Less Pressure": Black Transplants, Settler Colonialism, and a Racial Lens  1204. Racism in Paradise: AntiBlack Racism and Resistance in Hawaiʻi 1665. Embodying Kuleana: Negotiating Black and Native Positionality in Hawaiʻi  217Conclusion: Identity↔Politics↔Knowledge  261Notes  279Bibliography  305Index  331