Kirby's Wright's Weblog

Pidgin English in PUNAHOU BLUES

What I'm discovering is a few readers think I've misused Pidgin English in PUNAHOU BLUES, violating some Holy Grail of how words should be spoken. Well, I've got news--GET A LIFE! The thing about Pidgin is it's elusive and can't be nailed down. It sounds different in different communities, islands, and even in your own family. The more country the setting, the more Hawaiian words are used. Sometimes I hear a Southernlike twang to the pidgin, like the creole spoken on east end Molokai. When a "haole" writes in pidgin, it's immediately assumed he or she has no ear for dialogue and there's an implication he or she doesn't care. That's BOGUS, dudes and dudettes. If your a book critic or a student reading Pacific Island Literature, focus less on criticizing a writer's use or misuse of pidgin and more on the overall scope of the book. Burl Burlingame does this in his short and sweet Star-Bulletin reviews. If you think I've misused pidgin, so be it. But this does not diminish the power of my dialogue and descriptive passages.