Massie-Kahahawai Case Analysis

Improved Essays
John Rosa claims that the title of Local Story comes from the idea that the book is an instance of “talking story” about a local story, using this style of oral transmission in written form to convey to the reader the contents of the book. This is not a book specifically about the Massie-Kahahawai case specifically, but about the effect which this case had according to the author, a look into the formation of a local identity that brought together people of different ethnicities into one collective group as a result of the Massie-Kahahawai case (Rosa 2014:7). Local Story is indeed successful at explaining the Massie-Kahahawai case’s impact on the formation of local identity, but delves too deeply into the case’s smaller details and loses the reader to what should be a topic for the curious reader to research on their own. …show more content…
It begins with the night of the incident and an explanation of whites versus the non-white population’s interactions and from there follows a loose chronology of the incidents after it, along with relevant commentary of the social climate of Hawaii at the time. Rosa includes quotes from outside sources not directly a part of the case, related incidents, descriptions of the local people, the US military, and recent white immigrants into Hawaii. The book is then completed with a detailing of the aftermath of the Massie case, such as the works of fiction and nonfiction that came about from it, the lives of the people involved in the case, the direct impact created by the case, and how people should go about learning and understanding the case in the present

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