Tammy Conard-Salvo

Defending My Usage of "Hapa"

For several years now, I’ve been working on my personal website which hosts a collection of my stories—essays, musings, and personal reflections on what it means for me to be a multiracial Asian-American. I haven’t been as diligent as I should be about writing the stories. I generally have lots of ideas and will occasionally finish a piece and post it.

Like many site owners, I want people to visit. I want them to read and comment and engage in thoughtful discussion with me about the issues I present. I have received email from people who found my site to be helpful because they realize they are part of a group who wrestles with the same issues about identity. These emails are encouraging to me because the feedback demonstrates that I am part of a worldwide community of multiracial, multicultural individuals who share some of the same fears, experience some of the same conflicts, and confront the same issues that I discuss in my essays.

Recently, however, I received some very surprising email from several people in Hawaii who challenged my usage and definition of the word “hapa.” Their emails challenged my own adoption of the term to describe my own identity, telling me that not only had I misappropriated the term, I was not a hapa at all.

I admit I was taken aback by these email messages, even though it’s not the first time I’ve heard of Hawaiian groups trying to defend the word. They see it as a hijacking… I see it as an evolution of the word, like all words. I just wasn’t expecting to be hit full force like this, and I guess I should be glad that someone has found my site. Yet it still seems strange that they would object to my usage of the word and claim that they’ve never heard of my definition, when Kip Fulbeck and Hapa Issues Forum and Mavin are all just a few examples of groups embracing hapa as a term for biracial and multiracial Asian-Americans.

These Hawaiian groups want to reclaim what was originally a Hawaiian word and keep it in its purest form. As someone who deals with language and writing every day, I know that language itself cannot be kept pure. There’s this strange notion among many English scholars that there is, somewhere and somehow, this unadulterated version of the English language that is threatened by advances in technology or changes in culture and attitudes. But the reality is that language evolves and words take on new connotations or denotations. The ugly truth is that many of these linguistic alterations happen as a result of colonialism or even simple borrowing of concepts.

Does this mean that these Hawaiian groups do not have a legitimate claim to the word hapa or that anyone, myself included, can simply use the word willy-nilly because it’s a neat way to describe one’s ethnic and cultural identity? I do think that these groups have a point, and their goal to educate others about the origins of the word is a noble and valuable one. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that I am simply adopting a trendy word because I cannot find or create a better way to describe myself.

When I first heard about the word hapa, I was intrigued. I did not realize that people who shared my ethnic background, who were part-Asian, used such a precise term. They didn’t have to simply call themselves biracial or multiracial. They weren’t generically Asian-American. They also didn’t have to call themselves half-anything. These individuals—members of college campus organizations, scholars, artists, etc.—call themselves hapa because it describes who they are, who I am.

So while I completely understand why these individuals would try to correct me in my usage of the word hapa, I respectfully disagree with their assessment and will not cease and desist. I will continue to describe myself as hapa and only hope that this experience will establish a dialog about language, change, and identity.

However, if people are really concerned about what’s pure and who owns what, here is my response: give me back my kimchi. Kimchi, a “pure” Korean food, is now part of Hawaiian cuisine, a regular menu item at local restaurants, an option on various plate lunch combinations. If you demand that I give you back the word hapa, give me back my kimchi.

Do I honestly expect modern-day local Hawaiian culture to give up kimchi, wrap it in a package and send it back to me or to any “authentic” Korean? No, of course not. But my point illustrates how most, if not all cultures, evolve, (mis)appropriate, take on the values, culture, food, and words of other cultures. Purity no longer exists, if it ever did, and no one is more sympathetic to the desire to maintain ownership of culture than I am.

Some people may think my attitudes backward, considering my own Native American background. I should understand what it means to be indigenous and to have things stolen from me, right? I should respect what it feels like to have ideas misrepresented and exploited. I am also not ignorant to the history of Hawaii. Ronald Takaki’s Strangers From a Different Shore clearly describes how Hawaiian culture was impacted by the immigration (or indentured servitude) of hundreds and thousands of Asians who were brought in to work on the sugar plantations. This and many other events led to the near-demise of the Hawaiian language, but it also led to the emergence of a multicultural population in Hawaii... and, I believe, to the word hapa itself.

So now we come down to the meaning of the word hapa. What does hapa mean? Where does it come from and why are people so angry that I, a multiracial Asian-American choose to use the word to identify myself. I had always relied on other people’s definition of the word hapa, until I took a trip to Hawaii this past summer and purchased the New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary. The first word I looked up was, of course, hapa. The definition is simply thus:

hapa. 1. Portion, fragment, part; to be a portion, less (Eng., half.) 2. Of mixed blood; person of mixed blood.

Ok. So maybe the Hawaiians bombarding me with emails were right—to a certain extent. And so was I—to a certain extent. If I go by the purity of the definition, I am, indeed hapa. So are these Hawaiians, provided that there are only part or half Hawaiian (The word hapa haole, on the other hand, specifically identifies individuals who of white and Hawaiian descent.) So is every biracial and multiracial person around the world.

So the people emailing me are correct in pointing out that my description of the word hapa on my site (and the definition portrayed by so-called hapa organizations) is inaccurate in that it limits the term hapa to people who are part-Asian. However, since the term hapa is not culture or racial specific, I can call myself hapa and still meet the terms of the definition.

Does the ambiguity and multiplicity of the definition of hapa mean that Hapa Issues Forum, Kip Fulbeck, Mavin, and others should revise their posted definitions of the word hapa and not limit the word’s usage to themselves and people like them, part-Asian? No, and I don’t think that would happen anyways. It should, however, give us pause when we decide to use words to identify ourselves. I think knowing the origins of the word makes its usage that much more powerful for individuals like me, especially because many of us are in one way or another byproducts of American colonialism and expansion. Using a word that evolved because of a colonialist experience seems fitting, so perhaps it isn’t a misappropriation at all. Of course, the Hawaiians will disagree, and I wish them well in their quest to reclaim all that is theirs and theirs alone.

For me, regardless of whether I call myself hapa or not, I will still question my identity, and I will still ask myself what it means to truly belong to a community or group. While the emails I received at first rattled me, I feel less insecure now and more ready to face new and different challenges of being a hapa, a half-Korean, a multiracial and multicultural woman.