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"    Photo: Philip Friedman/Studio D   Kristiana Kahakauwila&amp;#039;s sparkling debut story collection, This Is Paradise (Hogarth), vivifies the scattered, underdog, dynamic communities of native Hawaiians whose familial and cultural ties to Oahu, Maui, Kaua&amp;#039;i, and the Big Island go back generations. A &amp;quot;hapahaole&amp;quot; (mixed Hawaiian and white) who grew up in California and Maui, Kahakauwila captures in six related stories the striving lives, colorful pidgin dialect, and varied relationships that anchor and challenge her strikingly drawn characters. In &amp;quot;Wanle,&amp;quot; which means &amp;quot;it is gone&amp;quot; in Chinese, a young woman by that name whose infamous cockfighting father was murdered works the early shift at a diner to carve out time to train her own birds. Her older Indian lover takes construction jobs, reads the poet Basho, and disapproves of cockfighting. But Wanle is determined to avenge her father by pitting her birds against those of the man who had a part in his death.   After arguing with her lover, she recollects, &amp;quot;I stayed outside with my birds until the sun sank completely into the ocean. The valley below turned purple in the reflected light, and above me Haleakala became nothing more than a black shadow against a black sky. I wanted to please the Indian, wanted to be the woman he thought I should be, but the roosters were my dad. They were my way of doing right by him, and they were me.&amp;quot; In the title story, groups of Hawaiian women take turns narrating the tale of a young white tourist girl (&amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re all white to us unless they&amp;#039;re black&amp;quot;) who goes missing after meeting a man at a local lounge. Their collective voices become a warning chorus against the dangers of thinking of Hawaii as a paradise, but also serve to soothe their spooked community. The other stories\u2014among them &amp;quot;The Old Paniolo Way,&amp;quot; about a grown son who comes out as gay as his father lies dying; and &amp;quot;Portrait of a Good Father,&amp;quot; in which a girl holds tight to her relationship with her dad after her parents&amp;#039; marriage ends\u2014prove Kahakauwila&amp;#039;s skill at showing that the real Hawaii, for all its beauty, is &amp;quot;no fantasyland.&amp;quot; This is Paradise is now available for purchase.  Kristiana Kahakauwila; Photo: Brandon Ng "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/news/a23364/this-is-paradise-book-review/>