Between the Sea and Sky: The Saga of My Portuguese American Family in Upcountry Maui, 1881–1941

When scholars discuss US immigration history, they tend to disproportionately emphasize immigration to the continental United States, such as the waves of European immigration to the East Coast and Asian immigration to the West Coast. In her family history, Between the Sea and Sky: The Saga of My Portuguese American Family in Upcountry Maui, 1881–1941, Donna M. Binkiewicz argues that historians ought to pay more attention to migration to other parts of the United States, such as Portuguese immigration to Hawai‘i. Binkiewicz narrates her ancestors’ travels from the Azores to Maui in the late nineteenth century in pursuit of a better life and job prospects, identifying in their journey a “universal saga of dreams, struggles, successes, and setbacks” (p. 2). Outside of this universality, the cross-continental saga of the Da Costa family reveals previously overlooked aspects of the history of the Portuguese immigrant community in Hawai‘i and its role in the development of the islands’ industry.The story begins with the Da Costa family's impoverished life in Bretanha, São Miguel, in 1881. Following the departure of the family patriarch, José, to Colón, Colombia, to work on the future Panama Canal and his sudden death abroad, the remaining members of the family leave for Maui out of economic necessity. Binkiewicz compellingly details how the California Gold Rush and the US Civil War increased demands for Hawaiian sugar production in the decades preceding the Da Costa family's arrival, enabling their voyage. Additionally, she describes Hawaiian king David Kalakaua's perspective on immigration, namely his attempts to restrict the number of Chinese migrants entering Hawai‘i, his preference for Japanese laborers who tended not to marry Hawaiian women, and his active pursuit of “immigration from Portugal” (p. 28). Binkiewicz goes on to discuss how Hawaiian sugar planters supported the government policy of selling land to white settlers as homesteads in the 1880s and 1890s, which allowed the Da Costas and other Portuguese immigrants to own their farms. Binkiewicz asserts that the economic interests of these planters and of American businessmen were a driving force in the ratification of the Bayonet Constitution in 1887—which took away much of the monarchy's power—and the eventual annexation of Hawai‘i into the United States in 1898.In contrast to earlier scholars of Hawaiian immigration, such as Ronald Takaki and Evelyn Nakano Glenn, who have tended to focus on Asian immigration, Binkiewicz emphasizes the importance of European immigration to the islands, arguing that the Portuguese presence, in particular, has been understudied. Her detailed history of Portuguese immigrants’ experiences in Hawai‘i expands the reader's understanding of the racial and class context of Hawai‘i on the brink of—as well as after—annexation. In so doing, she brings Portuguese immigration into broader conversations of “the American West, immigration, and labor” (p. 2). She argues that the Portuguese and other immigrant laborers were vital to the expansion of agricultural business in Hawai‘i and that planters, despite their attempts to separate workers of diverse ethnicities, failed to fully prevent the formation of organized labor or the development of mutual aid programs among these workers.The book's inclusion of family history through the use of private items in the author's possession, such as family recipes and photographs, helps humanize the story of the Da Costa and, through marriage, the Tavares families even as they endured hardships like World War I. Additionally, Binkiewicz's account of Hawai‘i's annexation through the lens of her family offers a new perspective on the decline of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the annexation even for readers already familiar with Hawaiian history. Indeed, Binkiewicz's writing is at its most compelling when she is dealing with the larger-scale history unfolding in parallel with the lives of her ancestors.While the personal history of Binkiewicz's extended family is fascinating, the book's focus on their life events occasionally detracts from the overall story of immigration which Binkiewicz purports to tell. Binkiewicz lingers on potential conversations between ancestors that often simply restate what she has outlined in the more explanatory paragraphs of any given chapter. The story of the Da Costa family's struggles and their dream of a better life is powerful, and yet Binkiewicz's repeated statement of this dream and uncritical focus on the economic opportunities that immigration to Hawai‘i offered to the family overshadow the role that immigration played in the dispossession of native Hawaiians. Binkiewicz notes that white American planters in Hawai‘i viewed Portuguese laborers as inferior to themselves but above the Indigenous population and Asian immigrants; little space, however, is dedicated to examining what the Portuguese immigrants thought of their position within the islands’ racial hierarchy. Future scholarship might add to Binkiewicz's project by delving into how Portuguese immigrants in Hawai‘i positioned themselves within the civilizing mission of American planters and by expanding on the significance of studying Portuguese immigration outside its absence from current histories.