May 6, 2010
A history in Hawaii: Staffer Jennifer Munro to share writing about family May 10
UW staffer Jennifer Munro was born and raised in Hawaii, land of sun and surf.
So what is she doing in Seattle?
“I adore it here,” Munro said. “I love the literary community, I love the change of seasons. I like the people.”
But she’ll celebrate her home state at an event on Monday, May 10, at Richard Hugo House. Titled There Will Be Spontaneous Dancing in the Streets: Words and Music about our Roots in Hawaii, the free program is part of a grant Munro received from 4Culture, a cultural services agency for King County that provides programs, financial support and services in the arts, public art, heritage and historic preservation.
The event begins at 7 p.m., and the Hugo cafe will be open for the purchase of beer, wine and pupus (appetizers).
By day, Munro is a payroll coordinator for the UW School of Law, but she earned her degree in English at the University, and has since gone through the UW Extension certificate program in literary fiction. So her application to 4Culture was for an individual artist’s grant to write about her family’s history in Hawaii. It’s a long history, she says, and one that’s intertwined with the state’s history.
Her great-great-grandmother arrived in the early 1880s on a ship from Norway — one of only two ships from that country bringing immigrant labor to what was then a monarchy. Her great grandmother was born there shortly after the ship landed. By the time her great-grandfather arrived from Portugal in 1893, the sugar barons were overthrowing the monarchy. And when her great-grandparents married, Hawaii was becoming a U.S. Territory.
Her grandfather’s connection to the state’s history is a little more dubious. He was an alcoholic who started — along with his brother — the first Hawaiian Alcoholics Anonymous chapter sometime in the 1930s. But he soon fell off the wagon. In fact, he slept through Pearl Harbor after a bender in Waikiki the night before. His brother went on to play bit parts in Hawaii Five-O, and once played a drunk on Magnum PI. “He shot that scene in one take with no rehearsal,” Munro said.
Despite this colorful history, Munro had never written about her family background, although she’s had stories and essays published over the last 10 years. That’s why she pursued the grant, knowing it would provide an incentive.
“This has been a wonderful project in that my parents have really enjoyed talking to me about all of this,” she said. “I’ve been calling them and e-mailing them with tons of questions. At first they can’t remember the answer, but then they call or e-mail me with information. Then sometimes they disagree about the details. It’s oral history that’s already losing some of its accuracy.”
It was her parents who gave her the title for her event. “There will be spontaneous dancing in the streets” is the headline that ran in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Aug. 21, 1959, the day Hawaii became a state. It’s also the day her parents met on a blind date.
“My mom thinks that headline is hilarious,” Munro said. “I mean, if something is spontaneous, how can you say it will happen?”
It also points up the contrast between the usual depiction of people caught up in historic events and the reality. Munro’s mother was quietly working backstage at the Honolulu Community Theater on statehood day, and her blind date with Munro’s father didn’t include any dancing in the street.
Munro will be reading pieces she’s written about Hawaii and her family at the May 10 event, and she won’t be alone. Loreen Lilyn Lee, another writer who grew up in Hawaii, will also read. There will be music too. Al Tringali will play the ukulele and Sheryl Akaka will play the slack key guitar.
“Slack key is a Hawaiian way of playing guitar,” Munro said. “It’s specifically the way the guitar is tuned. It’s almost like a secret recipe. Some Hawaiian families have their secret tuning for the guitar in their family and no one else knows. It’s a very distinctive, beautiful sound.”
Akaka is also going to be talking about her family. Her uncle gave the statehood address in 1959, and another uncle is U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, who is responsible for the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill that has been introduced in Congress every year since 2000.
The event will be hosted by Gregg Porter, who also hosts a weekly radio program, the Hawaii Radio Connection, on KBCS, a community station based at Bellevue College. Porter worked with Munro at KUOW in the 1990s, after which he fell in love with a woman from Hawaii and with the music of Hawaii.
“I’m hoping it will be a lot of fun,” Munro said. “I think there are going to be people there who have never been to Hawaii and don’t know anything about it, and I’m hoping they’ll learn a little bit about the true Hawaii rather than the Waikiki Hawaii. Then I think there will be people who have a lot of Hawaii connections, so for them it will be just a fun celebration.”
