Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio foregrounds the intimate in aloha ʻāina, a Kanaka Maoli conception of caring for land, or that which feeds. She provides a close reading of the classic Hawaiian epic Hiʻiakaikapoliopele alongside contemporary Kanaka Maoli battles with settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Osorio engages the uniquely Kanaka Maoli genre of moʻolelo by modulating seamlessly between the interpersonal and structural, analysis and composition, and the nineteenth century and the present day.
Keyword: relationality
Review of Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick (Duke University Press)
With Dear Science and Other Stories, Katherine McKittrick does the work of liberation and enacts new ways of being. Building on her previous studies, this collection engages in a story-sharing, collaborative praxis that emerges from a “black sense of place.” McKittrick’s Black and anti-colonial methodologies are “rebellious,” “relational, intertextual, and interdisciplinary”—thereby “breaching” the “recursive,” “self-replicating” logics of “our present order of knowledge” (44, 2, 23, 163). Dear Science invents, reinvents, and reimagines “being human as praxis” through an aesthetic practice of deciphering theoretical texts, photographs, sounds, dance, and song (159). Illustrating her commitment to Black intellectual life, McKittrick writes, listens, and feels in communion with other creatives. In so doing, McKittrick skillfully bursts open the gatekeeping conventions that limit thought, and challenges readers to question what they think they know.