Instead, it may have been one of moments in literary history when a new literature both begins and begins to end at the same moment. Yamanaka’s book seemed to promise a renaissance (or belated rebirth, even) of Pidgin literature in Hawai`i. The best book of Pidgin poetry, by most accounts, is Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s 1993 volume, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (Bamboo Ridge Press) hundreds of people attended the launch. Even the Bible, translated into Pidgin as Da Jesus Book(2000), sounds funnier than the translators probably intended.

You can watch one of Rap’s most famous skits, “Room Service,” here. Her collection of vignettes, Folks You Meet at Longs, is very very funny, as is her play, Da Mayah. Pidgin short, fast, match.” A lot of work (and play) in Pidgin comes out of a comic tradition, typified by the work of Rap Reiplinger in the 1980s and now in books and plays by former stand-up Lee Cataluna. Just ’cause I speak Pidgin no mean I dumb. Diane Kahanu wrote a poem that also became testimony before the Board of Education in 1987. Pidgin poetry is best known for its humor, its nostalgia, and its self-assertion (writing a poem about writing a poem in Pidgin is not uncommon, even now). The response, or “Keep Town Town,” might be read with a local accent, but it’s hardly da kine. While the local bumpersticker that reads “Keep the Country Country” is in standard English, its sentiment is Pidgin.

Baseball has a working class history in Hawai`i, especially among AJA, or Americans of Japanese ancestry soccer is played in a suburban middle class present untethered to plantation or war histories. Kāne`ohe is the suburbs Kahalu`u is still country. If I turn right on Kahekili Highway, in the direction of Kāne`ohe Town and highways to Honolulu, toward my daughter’s soccer practices, I drive into a world of local people who, for the most part, do not speak Pidgin to each other.

(The language is actually Hawaiian Creole English or HCE, but people in Hawai`i call it Pidgin.) Many dads come from work in the bright green shirts of construction and road-workers the moms, who speak less Pidgin, still live in its surround.

I also turn toward a community of coaches and parents who, for the most part, speak Pidgin English. When I turn left on Kahekili Highway near my house on the windward side of O`ahu, I turn toward my son’s baseball practice and many of his games in Kahalu`u.

Hawaiian speaking pidgin