Oral History Project

Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project
Pat Matsueda

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 second 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.

[ML outlines a few topics to discuss: HLAC, Pat’s work with Frank Stewart, the recent history of the literary community in Hawai‘i.]

PM: I just don’t want you to think everything I say is correct, because it may not be. I’m relying on my memory. I’m trying to recall events that happened probably when your parents were teenagers—so that’s a long time ago.

HLAC was founded, I think, in ’73. The early ’70s. Frank was named the pro tem president. I remember that he asked me if I wanted to be the newsletter editor, so I became that in 1977. In those early days, we met at a house in Mānoa, Kaye Frederick’s house, which is by that five-way intersection in Mānoa. She had a beautiful home. Of course, we were all just very young. I was in my mid-twenties; other folks were probably in their early thirties, except for Leon Edel and Marjorie Sinclair. We were just trying to create the groundwork for community.

I’m not sure who came up with the ideas of these committees, but at least two committees were formed. One was called the “Major Writers,” and I think the other was called the “Local Writers” committee. Their jobs were to apply for grant funds. HLAC had a 501(c)(3) designation, which allowed it to apply for both state and federal funds. As I recall, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, which was the state arts agency, had also been formed around the same time, so it was also very new. Alfred Preis, who was an architect—he designed the Pearl Harbor Memorial; I think his title was Executive Director of the State Foundation [on Culture and the Arts]—we were able to get funds.

I say we, but actually, other people did the grant writing. It wasn’t until later that I got involved in the grant writing.

As I said, Frank, Eric, Darrell all came up around the same time, around the mid- or late seventies. They were kind of regarded as the young guys, the young guard. I can’t remember when Bamboo Ridge first started publishing, but it must have been in the late seventies, and everything was so new, like being in the first year of college. We were all freshmen, and we were trying to do things right.

Later on, of course, there developed some politics. I think politics are inevitable. You can have politics everywhere. You can have politics at an old folks’ home. It takes a tremendous amount of grace and diplomacy to avoid it.

ML: Do you remember who you would consider as the “old guard,” the major writers?

PM: Well, one of the things that HLAC did was—and I don’t know whose idea it was—it got involved in the Hawai‘i Award for Literature. Through the State Foundation, they got the Governor’s office to make these awards. The people who got the award in the beginning were people like Leon [Edel], Ozzie [O.A.] Bushnell, Aldyth Morris, who wrote the play Damien; Maxine Hong Kingston got it when George Ariyoshi was governor. I think the last person to get it was Leialoha Perkins.

One of the people on the committees—that is, the committees that selected writers to go to the outer islands and read, and so forth—one of the people was Ray Tsuchiyama. Ray moved back to Hawai‘i from Japan a few years ago, so he could also be consulted as a source. He can talk about what it was like to be on the committee, and how they selected writers. Craig Howes, also. Loretta Petrie was a teacher at Chaminade and she became involved. Jim Kraus, who still teaches at Chaminade, was also involved.

ML: Another thing I picked up was that you mentioned the sense of wanting to “do things right.” I’m curious what “doing things right” meant to you and the others.

PM: At the beginning, there was a dual purpose [to HLAC]. One was to recognize people who had done a lot, who had long careers. People like Ozzie [O.A. Bushnell]. We don’t usually associate people like Leon Edel with Hawai‘i writing, but he was a force here. Of course, Maxine Hong Kingston. So [HLAC] had a dual purpose: one was to recognize those people, and the other was to support up-and-coming writers. Everyone wanted to make sure that people who were working and producing were getting support.

I was involved early on, but I wasn’t the greatest newsletter editor, much to my embarrassment. Sometimes the newsletter would come out late. We had no Internet, so it was really critical that people got their issues in their mail. The issues would announce things like readings, and the newsletter would come out after those readings were over! The newsletter was also grant-funded. Michael LaGory was also a newsletter editor.

[We talk briefly about politics within organizations.]

PM: These events happened so long ago that it doesn’t always seem right to bring them up.

I do remember a fight or a disagreement between Jack Unterecker, who was one of the older people in the [English] department, and Eric Chock. This had to do with the elections. I think the by-laws required us to have new officers every year, or every two years—I can’t remember now. But one thing that happened was that HLAC stopped having elections, so I think it might have lost its 501(c)(3) designation because it wasn’t following its bylaws.

As the young writers like Eric started to publish more and gain more prominence, I guess it was inevitable there would be a clash with the old guard. That was probably in the early or mid-eighties.

[We begin talking about Frank Stewart’s nomination for the Hawai‘i Award for Literature.]

PM: This is a bit of politics I was thinking about whether or not to bring up, because Craig [Howes] was involved in it and I don’t want to make Craig angry, though it happened so long ago he probably doesn’t have any feelings about it.

Frank [Stewart] was nominated for the Hawai‘i Award for Literature, but for some reason, the committee that actually selected the nominee ignored his nomination and chose to support someone who hadn’t even been nominated. That was Nell Altizer. Nell Altizer was certainly a good writer, but she hadn’t done as much in the local literary community as Frank had. It was a big surprise. I wrote a letter to either the State Foundation or the governor, I can’t remember which, but I know the governor responded. I simply asked to see the minutes of the meeting, but the minutes were never produced. He consulted the State Foundation, which consulted HLAC—it’s a pretty short pipeline—and anyway, nothing happened. Frank got the award after Nell did.

This is for future historians to weigh. Was this fair? Was it not fair? Does it not matter? Nell Altizer passed away some years ago—after moving away and before returning to Hawai‘i—and that really was a tragic loss.

[We move to talking about Darlaine Māhealani Dudoit.]

PM: Māhealani wanted to start this Native Hawaiian literary journal, the first not only in Hawai‘i, but everywhere. She had worked at Mānoa, and she built on that knowledge and experience to create this journal. We tried to help her.

She was an amazing person. She had the gift of sitting with you and talking to you as if you were the most important person in the world, and that kind of focus and attention were really rare. She was just good at everything she did. Her CV as a student went on for pages and pages. She was awarded her PhD posthumously.

She started the project [of the literary journal] as a student taking a course from Haunani Kay-Trask. For some reason, Haunani Kay-Trask gave her a B. She was upset about that, so she talked to me about it, and probably with other people. But that was shocking if you think about it. I’m not sure she knew [the reason], but she only mentioned it once.

Let me go backwards a little bit. So Māhealani, even though she was gifted—she was an artist, she was very smart—her endgame was not in the university. She wanted to move to the Big Island and create a Native Hawaiian cultural center. When she died, she was still a PhD student, but she had published a lot, so Frank Stewart and Tom Farber wanted to publish a volume of her writings. These writings included works about her father. She was telling the truth about her father. I believe one of the reasons her mother refused to give Frank and Tom the rights to publish the volume was that some of the writing about the father was unfavorable.

I think it has something to do with the time, because this is such a common occurrence, but in that generation you were disciplined physically, and this could often become violent. And so her father was violent. I think the men of that time didn’t get the understanding, the support that you young guys do now. It was a very different time. Masculinity, machoism, the military, and so on. These forces all created men who sometimes—oftentimes—took out their grief, their anger, their shame, their regrets on their families.

Māhealani wrote about that. She said that once, she went out with a teenage boy, and when she came home, her father was on the porch with a rifle aimed at the boy.

We published some of her writing in Mānoa. There’s one piece called “The Way South,” which is just fantastic. She was also a world traveler, the kind of person who could be dropped anywhere and make friends, survive, go camping, live here, live there, learn the language.

I remember once we went to a conference. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, AWP. We went to the conference—this is many years ago now, at least twenty years ago—and she came into the hotel room with a big bag, and she proceeded to take out the most amazing things including pots and pans and cooking stuff. She took us to Mount Hood, me and a couple of other people.

Then it snowed. We were in the ski lodge, and it snowed. We were trying to get back to the hotel in a blizzard. We couldn’t see the end of the car. But somehow, she got us down the mountain.

ML: That sounds symbolic in many ways.

PM: One more thing I want to say about her. She wasn’t a celebrity activist. Her personhood didn’t include celebrity, fame, showing off. She was self-contained, complete.

[Pat reads from her author’s note in Ms. Aligned. The note is about her poem, “My Friend Looks at the Horizon,” written about Tom Farber, Eddie Aikau, and Darlaine Māhealani Dudoit. We move to talking about Pat’s work in publishing Ms. Aligned.]

ML: Something I really love about Ms. Aligned is that combination of author’s photo, bio, artist’s statement—how did that come about? I never see that.

PM: Thank you. In 2014, I proposed a panel for AWP because I, and other female writers I knew, had written important works about men. The panel consisted of five of us. Each of us read, and then we talked a little bit about our writing, and then the audience started to participate. It was a wonderful experience. It was because of the audience that I thought of doing the series. These people are here, nine o’clock on a Thursday morning, the first day of the conference, and they wanted to listen to us. I thought, maybe it’s worth doing a book. By the way, Shawna [Yang Ryan] was one of the readers.

I know [including authors’ photos, bios, and artist’s statements] was not revolutionary or anything. But we weren’t aware of any other books like that, and it seemed really important to talk about why we were doing what we were doing. Why we were so mystified, enthralled, charmed by the masculinity and the male ego, such that we wanted to write about it. Not only wanted to write about it, but that we had to write about it.

You know, the very first in the series was—I won’t say it was controversial, but people didn’t like the cover image. They saw something sexual in the image. To me, it’s a beautiful image, and the photographer wrote a fantastic artist’s statement. It’s a boy, twelve years old, and that python—you wouldn’t know, looking at the picture, but it’s a female python. This boy just happened to … be really taken with it. Some couldn’t see it as anything but sexual. One woman wrote to me and she said, “Are you telling us that boys and men should get out their penises and display them?” And I said, “For God’s sakes, no!”

[We talk briefly about Kristiana Kahakauwila, who contributed to an issue of Ms. Aligned, which moves us into talking about local literature today.]

PM: You have to read her actual work. It is amazing. She talks about taking naps with her father, and lying on the floor and sleeping with him. This triggered various responses from female friends. But the idea of understanding this closeness, creating an understanding between the two of them is transcendental.

ML: How do you see local literature doing today? What do you think is happening in the literary world of Hawai‘i today?

PM: It’s extremely vibrant. I don’t think it needs me or anybody else to guide it. No one person is essential. It’s doing fine, it’s become its own ecosystem, which is wonderful. It’s guiding writers like you. It’s become self-sufficient, it’s growing, it’s inspiring people. It doesn’t need HLAC anymore.

ML: Maybe I’m ignorant of what’s out there available to writers now, but I don’t know a lot of the support systems besides the university for young writers.

PM: Writers could benefit from some kind of active support to get them to the neighbor islands, and people on the neighbor islands could benefit from support. They could be brought here, and there could be much more exchange between the islands—that’s where an organization like HLAC might play an important role. It could do the grant writing, grant administration, or run a very active program.

Right now, publishers have to use their funds to put on events, readings. A community organization like HLAC could fill that role and do that very well. It could also revive the newsletter; it could do a digital newsletter. […] It could have some kind of bibliography [of what is getting published in Hawai‘i]. It could help the bookstores.

Did you know a new bookstore opened downtown, in Chinatown?

ML: No, I didn’t.

PM: It’s on Bethel Street. They not only have books, they also have vinyl records.

ML: I’m just Googling it now. I think it’s called Skull-Face. Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff the university obviously doesn’t advertise; that’s what a newsletter could do for the literary community.

[We return to talking about Pat’s work at Mānoa.]

ML: Did both you and Frank step back from working on Mānoa?

PM: Yes, he’s not working on it anymore. The winter 2022 issue was the last one we did.

One of the reasons was that the staff got so small. It was basically just Frank and me. All the students we had mentored and became friends with disappeared, and that was sad.

We did have an intern last year, Lishan [Chan], and a young woman named Quinn White. We had this arrangement with Bennington College; they had this thing called “Fieldwork Term,” where they require students to go out and work for businesses or organizations for several weeks. Quinn was really amazing. She was eighteen, nineteen at the oldest. She worked to get money to live in Hawai‘i for several weeks. She got a place, she hiked all around. Quinn and Lishan were the last two students we had working with us.

It was not only that the kids grew up and moved away. In a sense, Mānoa grew up and moved away. So that last issue really felt like the final one for us. I’m anxious to see, now that Craig [Perez] is the new editor, what he will do with the journal.

ML: Do you know what Frank Stewart’s reason was ?

PM: We worked together well, and he just didn’t want to work with anyone else. I know that sounds self-congratulatory and it’s probably an exaggeration—though, who knows, it’s possible he might say that; I’m not sure.

ML: Do you know what’s next for you?

PM: I have a small business in which I help people [with publishing]—someone just contacted me because he wants help with this chapter he’s contributing to an academic publication. And, you know, a lot of my time is just spent watching my cats. And reading all the comments and posts on Reddit, especially on unidentified anomalous phenomena.

That’s something we could talk about: social media. I’m just really surprised to find that Reddit, where we’re completely anonymous, has become my favorite place to be. Some of the comments are really dumb—I just wonder why these people are on Reddit; it seems they have nothing better to do—but there are also very smart, thoughtful people on there, and I’ve learned a lot from them, especially about journalist Leslie Kean. The fact that she’s a woman and a leading spokesperson for my favorite community, UAPs, inspires me.

ML: Just thinking about literary communities: sometimes on /r/writing, there’s a lot of encouragement and good advice. I wonder if we could benefit from that here, an online presence for Hawai‘i.

PM: That would be great! You should create a subreddit!

ML: /r/HawaiiWriters?

PM: I’ll help you!