“Ribbons of Light” by Thomas Leung. From the collection of Lahaina Galleries.

When Darrell Lum and I started Bamboo Ridge Press in 1978, it was seen by some in Hawai‘i’s literary scene as a militant plot to overthrow the English department at the University of Hawai‘i. Back then, in what many still called provincial Hawai‘i, where some called the local university just another plantation with its principally white male (though not yet dead) faculty, in a Hawai‘i where the meaning of “don’t make waves” is complicated by the Islands’ multicultural mentality, we were troubling the waters more than ever before—just by putting out a little staple-bound ’zine of “local” writing.

Now, 30 years later, with glossier covers and perfect binding, we have our publications assigned as textbooks at places like Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UC Berkeley, and many less august institutions. Now, instead of being told by my professors that Hawai‘i has no writers or literature to speak of—that is, aside from James Michener with his exoticized, eroticized locale—local writers are having their work read, discussed and written up in college classrooms across the country. Now we can point to local writers who’ve won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, even the University of Hawai‘i. We must be doing something right.

Yes, there was truth to the militant attitude and the need to make a statement about authentic local culture. The vision of local people was not being portrayed in outsiders’ views of Hawai‘i and not being taught in our public schools or local colleges. But the cultural protest against exotic hula girls and lazy natives was not the whole story.What it came down to for us was that we just wanted to publish good stories. We knew stories were being written with local characters we remembered from growing up local. From “da bull of da school,” to the 80-year-old Chinese popo looking for a nice Chinese daughter-in-law, to the Japonee boys drafted or volunteering for the 442nd during World War II, we wanted to enter our own world, reflect on our own lives and, through joking, laughter and teasing, re-experience our lives as art. The oh-so-local beer-can yarn hat. The teen prom-queen wannabe socially torn between the affections of a “high-tone” haole boy and a pidgin-speaking “brada” who may or may not be the one. The boy who bets the new “Mainland” girl that the word “bumbye” is in the dictionary. We cheered our heroes on, were hopeful for them, as we were hopeful for ourselves.

Some Hawai‘i writers were exploring part-haole, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino or other local lives, and the cultural mixing that’s standard in the Islands. Others focused on the “small-kid time” humor or the serious ethnic conflict issues endemic here. This mixture of laughter and tears is more than an appealing cathartic synthesis for the reader; it’s a common characteristic which keeps the stories entertaining and educational, popular enough for local bestseller lists and complex enough for the lit-crit crowd in college circles. Good enough so that some local writers are being translated into German, Dutch, Korean, Chinese or Japanese. This approach is part of what has kept local literature thriving for over three decades now, this philosophy that says literature is not dead in our tech-focused world.

Why would this attract any interest outside of local circles? Who can tell the difference between local flavor, exotica and authentic depiction of a culture? William Carlos Williams said that the “local is the only universal,” and that there are “no ideas but in things.” Read the story, get the specific details of the well-written piece, and any human should get it, right?

Stories that speak to our humanity in its many facets will always find an audience. Whether in hard copy, online, e-book or TV-movie version, stories will always remain essential to our lives.

So where have we come since the protest days of the ’70s? Because of the focus on local settings, we have seen many characters who speak in our local pidgin. There has been a range of topics, from childhood nostalgia to political satire. Along with the rest of the world, taboo subjects like sexual oppression, child abuse or drug culture have been explored. This ain’t your grandmother’s literature anymore. The ethnic melting pot, myth or reality, has been deconstructed and conscious attempts have been made to portray characters of all the major groups populating the Islands, even as we trended away from the core immigrant groups of the plantation era to the global migration patterns of today. Not to leave out the indigenous Hawaiians, of course! Land rights issues, blood quantums and questions of sovereignty have all been taken fromthe lives of this relatively small population and turned into stories, plays, movies, poems, comedy, rap and songs.

With global media instantaneous worldwide, depictions of Hawai‘i have become familiar. From Hawai‘i Five-0 to Magnum P.I. to Lost, we want to see our home mirrored for the world, but we are sensitive about how our lives are written. Isn’t everyone? The initial impetus of the emergence of local literature in the ’70s was one of pride, of saying we are here and should be heard too, don’t look past us. That principle will always lie beneath the surface, erupting in its various manifestations as the social milieu changes with the times. Back then, we were making an attempt to colorize the white palette to more accurately reflect the landscape of our Hawai‘i. Today, the literary landscape is more to our liking and even has advocates far beyond our shores. Not to mention all the supporters now at the local university.

ERIC CHOCK and DARRELL LUM are co-founders and co-editors of the award-winning, private, nonprofit Bamboo Ridge Press, celebrating celebrating its 30th anniversary of continuous publication of local literature. It is not affiliated with any institution or university. Visit www.bambooridge.com