Oral History of Pat Matsueda Session #1

Oral History Project

Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project
Pat Matsueda

Session #1

Summary

Interview of Pat Matsueda (PM), conducted by Micah Lau (ML) for the Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project via Zoom, on June 1, 2023. Pat speaks of the 1978 Talk Story Conference, Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council, Mānoa, and her writing. Pat also recalls Gail Harada, Phyllis Thompson, Frank Stewart, and others.

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Pat Matsueda (PM) on June 1, 2023. The interview took place via Zoom, and was conducted by Micah Lau (ML) for the Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project. This interview is the first session of two.

Pat Matsueda and Micah Lau have reviewed the transcript and made their corrections and emendations. This transcript has been edited for readability by the Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

[Pat Matsueda reads from a work-in-progress: the preface to a novella. It is about watching The Madman of the Crossroad—one in a series of experimental films by Jean-Teddy Filippe—which has an unsettling effect on her. The preface ends “I have attempted to fashion a story made of elements that compose an extraordinary tale of faith. I dedicate it to Tibor (Nagy, the main character of The Madman) and other innocent believers.”]

ML: I know you talked about this in different interviews, but if there’s a main focus that you might want to take from the early life, I was just curious: Was there a moment where you knew that you would become a writer?

PM: The key word in your question is early. I didn’t realize I would become a writer. There was an early essay that was published in the Hawai‘i Herald. I don’t know if you’ve met Gary Tachiyama […] When I was in my twenties, he solicited a piece about my early life, so it is probably the first account that I wrote of my childhood and was my first conscious attempt at writing an essay as a writer.

As I recall, it’s mainly about fishing—going fishing in my neighborhood—and is probably not very good. This was in Liliha. I wouldn’t say it was a rural area, but it wasn’t a developed one. There were houses back there, some of which were the old plantation style: simple, one-floor wood houses with dark-green paneling and white trim. Such houses were still standing at that time. There were freshwater ponds in that area where my sister and I and friends used to go fishing.

In fact, it makes me sad to think about it because that childhood experience is completely lost to kids these days—except for those who might live on other islands. […] Your five senses form in a different way, you know. If you don’t smell the earth, catch fish in freshwater streams, and so forth, you have a very different sense of the world and yourself. That early awareness of the natural world is one of the things key to my identity as a writer.

[We begin talking about the 1978 Talk Story conference.]

PM: When I look at the anthology that came out of it, I’m surprised by the number of names I don’t recognize. Either these people have moved away from Hawai‘i, or else their writing hasn’t stayed with me. This is in contrast to people like Eric Chock and Gail Harada—those whose writing I know. Whose writing is very important. Whom I admire.

I recently went to the launch of a book on women surfers by Mindy Pennybacker, the former Star-Advertiser writer. I was surprised to learn that she named as her two best writing buddies Scott Kikkawa and Gail Harada. It made me realize how much time has passed since the Talk Story days, how people have changed and grown and become influential in their own circles.

And this reminds me that there’s something important I wanted to mention to you, and that’s the role of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council [HLAC] in the formation of the local writing community.

At one time, HLAC was a very vigorous and important organization in local writing. When I say local writing, I mean the writing community here in Hawai‘i. It had nonprofit status, and as a result of that status, it was able to apply for grants at the national and state level. It had committees that applied for grants and then administered the funds. It had two major committees —and you should check this with people who would remember—the “major writer” and the “local writer” committees. So, you can see how much in opposition these categories were:“major” as opposed to “local.”

ML: What was the distinction [between “major” and “local”], in their mind?

PM: When I was a junior at McKinley High School, two poets—Phyllis Thompson and Mel Takahara—came to my English class to talk about poetry. Mrs. Thompson later taught in UHM’s English department as a creative writing teacher and helped found HLAC in response to a request from State Foundation on Culture and the Arts director Alfred Preis. Seeking the English department’s support, HLAC approached the department and asked if it could support readings by allowing HLAC to use its facilities for events. This brought up the question of whether or not the department would be endorsing the writers HLAC sponsored. The decision was made to distinguish between major writers—those nationally recognized—and local writers, those locally recognized. Though some people argued against these categories, a senior professor argued for them, and because of his rank and combativeness no one opposed him. Of course, as time went on, these categories became controversial—especially as the local writers became more prominent.

With funding from both state and national agencies, HLAC not only sponsored readings by people on O‘ahu, but also sent writers to the neighbor islands. They performed a really important function, putting on events for the public, and they also produced a newsletter.

Now the other thing that happened—I don’t know if it was around that time; I would guess it was afterward—was that the publishers began to acquire influence and prominence. And they ended up supplanting HLAC when it came to putting on events and getting funds and things like that. So, they superseded HLAC when it came to serving the community and helping the community grow.

ML: Which publishers?

PM: I mean Bamboo Ridge, which is the most prominent example. Because of Bamboo Ridge’s growth, HLAC eventually was not needed the way it was before. Bamboo Ridge, of course, has non-profit status. And for that reason, it was able to apply for grants on its own, so it didn’t need HLAC the way it did originally. Other publishers included Michael McPherson’s Hapa Press, and there were others like Hawai‘i Review.

ML: Was HLAC involved in getting some of these local writers published? After these local publishers came up, they didn’t need the help of HLAC?

PM: We’re talking about events that happened in, like, the seventies, so this was a long time ago. The other thing that happened was that a bunch of writers came up at the same time: Eric [Chock], Darrell [Lum], Frank Stewart. There were writers who preceded them, like Ozzie Bushnell, Leon Edel, Marjorie Sinclair. We can think of them as the “old guard”—I hope nobody minds my calling them that—and some were professors in the English department.

And then the people who came after them tended to be students. These people—Frank, Eric, Darrell—formed their own organizations. So as time went on, Bamboo Ridge and other entities became thriving organizations, and HLAC… It began to shrink. There was a small pool of volunteers who could work on these things, and it was difficult to get people involved to do a lot of work for free. The community of volunteers tended to be small, and when new people did join, they were friends, colleagues of the people who were already in the organizations. So this is how the English department came to be associated with HLAC—and how the English department came to be seen as having some power or authority.

The older people in the department had their own kind of literature, and the newer people were writing out of their own experiences. These are two very different things.

One of the old guard was Ozzie Bushnell, who was a microbiologist originally, and he wrote novels about old Hawai‘i. So he can be seen as someone who was straddling the literature of Hawai‘i.

ML: Do you recall the difference between something by Bushnell versus something by, say, Frank Stewart?

PM: Well, I think the obvious difference is that younger writers were writing out of their own experiences, whereas Ozzie was writing about figures in history, or people or characters he might have invented. Ozzie’s writing has a strong historical bent. But you know, really, you should check these things with a lot of other people. These are just my memories and my opinions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they need correction.

HLAC is now a moribund organization whose only function is to award the Cades award. It no longer applies for grants and puts on events.

[We talk about Mark Panek, a writer based in Hawai‘i, in comparison to James Michener.]

PM: [Panek’s Hawaii: A Novel] is a version of Hawaii written from a resident’s point of view.

The word “resident” is so funny. You know what used to be common terms while I was growing up? These appeared in the newspaper, the common terms, “kama‘āina” and “malihini.” And they disappeared, which is such a shame, because they were so useful in identifying people. They were not pejorative or based on class or ethnicity. When you talked about kama‘āina, you meant someone who had grown up here, went to school here, and malihini meant someone who had recently arrived.

I think the disappearance of those terms, and the supplanting of them by terms like “settler” and “colonial” have eradicated some of the social goodwill, community bonds that once existed among us.

ML: [Candace Fujikane] is someone I’ve worked with a lot, and I think she—not regrets, I don’t even know if “undo” is the right word—but instead of “settler colonial,” she’s looking toward “settler aloha ʻāina.” But again, it does seem to me a little academic—it’s not what represents everyday life.

I don’t recommend this, but looking at Reddit’s “/r/Hawaii,” there’s all sorts of conversations like, “Will I ever be ‘local’?”—questions from folks arriving here.

PM: Yeah! One thing I saw in that subreddit is the question of, “Are these areas safe? Like ‘Ewa Beach or Wai‘anae.”

[We begin talking about Darlaine Māhealani Dudoit.]

PM: Darlaine Māhealani Dudoit is an important person to talk about. She was Hawaiian Chinese and other things too. And she didn’t like the Chinese part of herself. In fact, when she was mad at some member of her family, she would say, “He’s so Chinese,” which is very funny.

She was a very strong, unique person. We’d be lucky to come across another person like her in this century.

She was a sovereignty person, she was a writer, she got awards in almost every genre: poetry, fiction, essay. She wanted to start a native Hawaiian cultural center on the Big Island. It’s a huge shame she wasn’t able to fulfill that dream.

She had definite opinions, and there were things about haoles she didn’t like, and she would express her opinions. But she was also a very loving person. I don’t know what would have happened to local politics if she had not died. She was a key person to those of us who knew her.

[Pat reads a poem she wrote for Dudoit, “Still Center,” from her poetry collection titled Stray. We move to talking about Pat’s working relationship with Frank Stewart.]

PM: I met Frank when I was very young—twenty-four, and he was thirty—and I had not known any poets before, so he really shaped my idea of poetry, as I think he did for many people.

I know he’s become kind of a controversial figure and that’s partly because of the controversies that existed in the department. So I don’t want to feed that thinking, that story.

He did work very hard on Mānoa journal, and it really is his creation. I used to tell people who joined the staff that he was the visionary, the creator, and that I was the mechanic. I was the head mechanic, and I would tell them what to do and we tried to realize his vision. That was our job.

I learned a lot. It’s amazing to think how naïve and ignorant I was at the start, in 1992, but that’s one of the good things about getting older. “You can say, I’m not as ignorant as I used to be.”

He is a very talented artist. His most recent book is Still at Large. There’s a good review of it by Terese Svoboda. I think if you read the review, you’ll get a really good sense of his artistic and historical vision.

He was raised in Washington, D.C., and when he was living there, he became involved in the civil rights movement. He actually went down south and participated in marches and demonstrations. I don’t know if you’ve seen our issue Tyranny Lessons, but that reflects his experiences in the South. He knew some of the people who are talked about and photographed in that issue. He has a strong sense of social justice and what’s right and what’s wrong in the U.S. And that has guided us.

We also tried to avoid literary politics at the beginning, in the nineties. We were sometimes put on the spot and asked to declare our politics, to get involved in political discussions. We always declined because we didn’t really have a politics that we wanted to proclaim or impose.

ML: [Referring to an article about the Talk Story conference.] I remember the article mentioned Frank Chin pointing a finger at Maxine Hong Kingston for not being political. Was that a tension? Do you remember anything about that—arguments between them at that conference? Sorry for meandering.

PM: You know, it’s so easy to look at someone like Maxine and criticize her. I mean, in a sense, that’s why history created her success: so that people could react to it and think about what it says about them, their times, and their biases.

I don’t know. I always go back to the human. You know, to the everyday. What is she doing every day? What is she thinking? What is she writing?

But you probably know that she got very involved in helping veterans of various wars, helping them write about their experiences. She’s highly regarded by that community because she helped them express a lot of their pain and their confusion, to find their way out of the trauma of war through essays, poems, stories.

ML: [Referring to a previous interview by Pat in Kyoto Journal.] I remember reading about how you were looking for writers from Cambodia to tell their stories. To have to make statements on politics—you were looking so far outward—it didn’t seem congruous.

PM: Right. We wanted them to tell their own story rather than impose a certain philosophy on them.

[…]

ML: I really didn’t know the history of the tension of the political. Do you know how Bamboo Ridge stood on that fence?

PM: No, I don’t. Mānoa and Bamboo Ridge were often mentioned in the same breath as if we were fraternal twins, you know, similar but not identical. I think as time has gone on, people have separated us and we no longer have to occupy the same small space. The world has gotten much bigger; there’s a lot of room to move around in. Bamboo Ridge is, without question, a very important part of history, literary or otherwise, here and elsewhere.

Mānoa doesn’t seek to toot its own horn or to establish a territory or anything like that. We hope that people will want to read our issues and will find value in them. And that’s really all we can ask for.

[We talk briefly about Shawna Yang Ryan.]

PM: Our [Mānoa] office has kind of been a second or third home to her [Shawna Ryan]. Which it has been for other people as well, most of them students.

You know, that’s one odd thing about technology. Technology has actually enabled us to do more with fewer people. And so sadly, our staff has shrunk. It’s an odd kind of evolution and I’m sure it’s happened to other journals: allowed us to operate with only two or three positions.

We had two interns last year: Lishan Chan, our Abernethy fellow; and Quinn “Bug” White, a Bennington Field Term student. They were both good workers.

Near the end of August, I had a retirement party, having worked for the journal for thirty years.

[We discuss “Guardian,” a poem from Pat’s Bitter Angels.]

ML: “Guardian,” the one where you’re kind of inhabiting the perspective of an older native Hawaiian woman, really reminded me of a poem from [Brandy Nālani McDougall’s] The Salt Wind. Do you want to tell me about it, and a little about that subject?

PM: For a while I worked for a state agency and I was asked to be the legislative liaison. One day, I went to this hearing on who should study violence in the home, and there was this woman who was much as I described her in “Guardian.” I was really struck by the way she described the violent abuse that she endured and how it affected her self-image.

My husband beat me, and I
and my ten children suffered. . .
People wanted to put me in an insane asylum.

. . .

I inherited the throne
upon which God laid our suffering.
This suffering was great
because our glory was to endure.

. . .

Violence destroyed my mortal self
and suffering made me a queen.

What I was trying to do in that poem was go into the woman’s interior, her mind, and see the world as she did. The kind of shattering, the breaking of the vessel that I describe at the end is a destruction of many things, including what should have been a way for her to live a healthy and normal life. When it was destroyed, something very scary took its place. “Guardian” is also a poem about generational violence as we see the twisted effects of the mother’s abuse transferred to the daughter.

[We talk about writing about Hawai‘i.]

ML: I was going to ask a question about writing about Hawai‘i, and whether you have any sort of anxiety about that.

PM: Well I write about Hawai‘i a lot in Bedeviled.

[Pat reads from Bedeviled, her novella, a section where Ted crashes his motorcycle into a guard rail on the Pali Highway.]

PM: The reason I want to read that is because when I first wrote this section, I didn’t say much about the Pali. And it was Frank [Stewart] who suggested I say more about it. Then I realized I could select details that would give a sense of how dangerous the area was. And how it kind of encouraged people to do things like kill, or murder, or kill themselves.

I always think back to how such a small thing like embellishing or giving character to a place can really affect a story, and I’m so glad [Frank] told me to do that because it didn’t occur to me. […]

The other thing is that the details about the motorcycle, which I got from my boyfriend, who rides a motorcycle, added technical interest that I really liked.

Writing about Hawai‘i is something that’s hard for me partly because I came to Hawai‘i from Japan. I was not born here. My mother was a single mother; she had a really hard time. She only had a high school degree, and she was a Japanese national. My father was a Japanese American soldier from Maui. He was abusive. My parents got divorced when I was very young. My mother brought my sister and me to Hawai‘i; we had been living on a U.S. air force base prior to that.

So my perspective, as I have said in other interviews, is that of an outsider. I’m definitely not someone who grew up in a middle-class family, who had a middle-class upbringing. I’m not integrated into local society the way I think other people are. I believe my writing has that kind of feeling to it: of not being on the inside—of having some distance, isolation. Of not being fully accepted.

Go to Session #2

For thirty years, Pat Matsueda served as the managing editor of Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, published twice a year by University of Hawai‘i Press. She was fortunate to be mentored in poetry and publishing by Frank Stewart and to participate in Hawai‘i’s literary arts scene during its early years. She thanks Donald Ching for selecting her for the oral history project and Micah Lau for interviewing her. See someperfectfuture.com for information about her projects and publications.

Micah Lau

Talk story

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