Problematizing the Multiracial Promised Land: Multiracial Settler Belonging in Hawaiʻi in the Asian American Literary Imagination

Abstract This article problematizes the imagination of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial “promised land” for mixed-race characters in Asian American fiction who struggle to find home and belonging within the continental United States. By putting critical mixed-race studies in conversation with settler-colonial studies and applying this layered lens to Asian American literary analysis, this article raises the question of whether the desire for belonging and national inclusion under multicultural liberalism necessarily erases Indigenous presence and priorities. After tracing the history of the discourse of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial utopia and situating the complex position of Hawaiʻi in Asian American studies, I briefly analyze the teleological development of Don Lee’s Country of Origin (2004) and Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation (2002), where the respective multiracial protagonists’ search for home and belonging lead them to Hawaiʻi, replicating the settler-colonial imagination of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial paradise that obscures Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) culture and presence. In contrast to these continental US-based novels, Kathleen Tyau’s A Little Too Much Is Enough (1995) highlights the interstice of Asian migrant-settler and Kanaka Maoli positionalities through its nonlinear and polyvocal stories about one Chinese-Hawaiian family. The novel demonstrates the persistence of Kanaka culture and genealogy under the conditions of settler colonialism, which seeks to repress and erase Indigeneity through compulsory assimilation and multicultural liberalism. Drawing on Kanaka geographical epistemologies, A Little Too Much Is Enough offers an alternate understanding of home and belonging for multiracial Hawaiians and their migrant-settler families.