Aloha is Endangered (Bamboo Ridge Issue #130) by Kōloa, Kaua'i born and bred poet Tamara Wong-Morrison is the culmination of a writing life that began more than fifty years ago. Wong-Morrison's early poems express a youthful activist's alarm and anger at bearing witness to the changes in her beloved community as the economic priorities of the islands shifted from the sunsetting sugar plantations to the booming tourism industry. Tempered with wisdom and maturity, her later poems continue to document and celebrate a way of life that is fragile and endangered and yet at the same time, guided by the sensibility of a true teacher's years of experience. These poems affirm that what can be identified can also be saved.
Deeply tied to Kaua'i, Aloha Is Endangered is a poetic record of activism, family memory, and a way of life under pressure. It asks what happens when land, language, community, and livelihood are treated as expendable, and what might still be protected when people refuse to forget their value.
Tamara Wong-Morrison was born and raised on the island of Kaua'i in the 1950s when the economy was changing from the sugar plantations to the tourism industry. Many local people supported this change which happened first on the sunny south side of Kaua'i in Po'ipū-Kōloa where Tamara grew up.
One of her first jobs was babysitting at the Prince Kuhio Hotel, a small concrete-block building right next to the birthplace of Kaua'i's Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole. Her brothers worked across the street at the Tahiti Nui restaurant where they ran around the yard lighting the tiki torches at dusk wearing only malo (loincloth). Tourism development was relatively small and low-rise compared to the high-rise hotels being built in Waikīkī then.
With the rapid increase of more resorts on the four major islands, the impacts, both positive and negative, began to emerge. The community started questioning, "What about a diversified economy, keeping some land in agriculture, better jobs for our children?" Today, these questions and more are still being asked.
Tamara started writing poetry about the changes in her community in the early 1970s. One of her first poems, "Strange Scent 1778," forebodes the impact of Captain James Cook and hints at the destabilizing effects of rapid change.
"Watch out compadre, the changing times as the tides can drown you in its undertow," she wrote in her poem "Māhā'ulepū" in 1974. She started teaching poetry in Hawai'i's public schools in 1987 and is still teaching full-time at Volcano School of Arts & Sciences.
"I read this collection in one sitting, unable to pull myself away from the power of Wong-Morrison's sleek, pointed language and the imagery that leaps off the page and catches in your throat. I found myself reacting out loud with 'Oh!' and 'Wow!' as I read, and at one point, was overcome with tears. There is passion and anger here, but the kind of anger that calls you into the fight. There is also a sense of healing. To experience this collection of poetry is like being fortified by the red clay earth Wong-Morrison describes." — Lee Cataluna, playwright and journalist
"Aloha is Endangered is more than a warning; it is a call to arms, a battle cry resonating with full-throated lamentation and activation. Wong-Morrison taps into the guttural agony of witnessing the rapid decline of everything that supports her family's way of life at the hands of outside oppressors. With a lyrical but direct voice, she moves between fierce political confrontation and intimate family memory as she elegizes every loss. Wong-Morrison draws readers into her experiences as an activist for the lāhui through the rhythms of food, land, labor, and everyday life. From colonialism to capitalism, urbanization, and overdevelopment in support of tourism, the detrimental ripple effects saturate every basic need of kānaka, including everything she holds dear. Aloha is Endangered reminds us of our past and urges us to cling to what's sacred as we move into an uncertain future." — Kalehua Kim, author of Mele
"A timely capture of modernity, these vibrant poems remind us to savor every ironic morsel of our lives as Hawaiians." — Sage U‘ilani Takehiro, poet
"This volume of poetry stands as an indelible record of both loss and celebration, as well as an intricate internal and external island history. Delivered in an evocative voice that is sometimes as sharp as a bullet and sometimes as lyrical as the wind, it often resonates the collective heart of those born, raised and rooted in the ʻāina. Tamara Wong-Morrison uses words the way an expert painter, or film director practices their craft—by creating vivid images that appear to the reader in full and vibrant color, sometimes accompanied by vivid characters. If you love passion and intensity, you will love these poems." — Victoria Nālani Kneubuhl, playwright and author
"Tamara brings together community and history in this collection of poems. She speaks to the heart of her purpose and we truly appreciate the reminders that this book brings to our lives each day." — Ka‘imi Kaupiko, 'Ohana Miloli'i, Hawai'i
