Student of the Month April 2015
Featuring: Kevin Bechayda
University of Hawai‘i at MÄ noa
A Note on the Series Our Student of the Month series features on our website stellar student writing and visual art from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, the institution where our roots dig deep. In print for more than 40 years, our journal has been an established voice in the Pacific and beyond for decades, featuring work from emerging writers alongside literary heavyweights. The Student of the Month series is our latest effort to expand Hawai‘i Review’s reach in local and far-reaching literary communities.
Introduction
For this month’s feature, we have the pleasure of publishing an essay and poem by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa student Kevin Bechayda. Kevin was nominated by his English 100 instructor, Aiko Yamashiro. Her beautiful introduction is as follows: In fall 2014, I challenged my English 100 freshman students to write in difficult ways. I asked them to find and name the hearts of their essays, and to write about things that really mattered to them. To struggle to create their own essay questions instead of answering prompts. To draft again and again, because the writing was a way to figure out and honor their lives. I was nervous to demand so much from them. I shouldn’t have been. Every single one of them rose to that challenge in beautiful and stunning ways. Once Kevin Bechayda realized that he could write about things he felt passionate about, there was no holding him back. He moved me to tears with the fierce dedication he brought to his work, and with the way he listened so carefully to other voices in order to find healing for his own community. Wow, this is what it means to be a scholar with a brave heart and creative soul. I am honored to share some of this work with Hawai‘i Review, and thank all of my students for humbling and inspiring me infinitely.
Copyright © 2015 by the Student Media Board, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa If you are a student and would like to feature your work in Student of the Month or an instructor for a creative writing course and would like to submit exemplary University of Hawai‘i student work to Hawai‘i Review’s Student of the Month initiative, please send submissions to our Submittable account at bit.ly/submit2HR Contact us at hawaiireview@gmail.com
Enjoy this beautiful feature! —The Editors
Independent Became the New Community
Teenagers are ditching school to go down the road to buy a “special” from one of the “wagons.” They are escaping from the struggle of having to read books, write essays, do projects, deal with numbers, perform experiments, and study what has happened in the past for A’s on a piece of paper. They choose to live an uncomplicated lifestyle. Students are choosing to get high off of weed at discreet locations, going to class with pungent smells slightly masked by a heavy layer of cologne. Teenagers are going to parties consuming alcohol to get intoxicated, have a stupid impulsive behavior, and to look cool because apparently stupid is cool. People are cussing, “Who da fuck you tink you is!?” at one another just to look tough in this rough environment. These unnecessary conflicts are created because of the differences they have based on race, physical appearance, and wealth. This is what people from other parts of the island think of Nanakuli, my community, my home, and my family. With almost no experience with my community, they make quick judgments based on what they hear: Nanakuli is no good, has no future, and has no hope. This label sealed us in with shame and some of us begin to say, “This is what life has given to us, so this is the life I shall live.” Although there are those who see no family is perfect, fighting to break the seal, and emancipating my community from the confines of society, allowing us to heal. This empowers me to ask, how can I enhance the health of my community, Nanakuli? Students from Nanakuli High and Intermediate School are sometimes ashamed of who they are and where they come from, because of the simple fact that they are a part of the Nanakuli community. A community healer at Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services named Dawn Mahi wrote an essay about her own community, Kalihi, and questions, “Where does that shame come from? Is it true that we suck, that we should feel shame just by being born?” (63). Kalihi and Nanakuli have some commonalities being that they are both oppressed communities, and that people of the community are ashamed of who they are as a community and as individuals. Nanakuli consists mainly of Hawaiian homestead land so the majority of the people here are Hawaiian. Many of them have been uprooted from their roots through education or western influences. They were taught to live like those who have colonized the island; constantly paying attention to the latest trends of society and living the American way of life. I am not Hawaiian but this relates to me as well. My parents left the Philippines, their home, to pursue a better future, but this lead me to being disconnected from my roots under the influence of the American way of life. I can say that I am ashamed of who I am as a Filipino from Nanakuli because I learned that Filipinos and being from Nanakuli are both bad qualities to have in our western life, and who wants to look bad? These social barriers cause a hesitation for social interaction because people do not feel accepted. Dawn Mahi’s solution to this shamefulness is through “The strength of our networks – that constellation – will determine our future success, and help us navigate through the rough waters. It will bring us home” (62). She feels that if people within the community share their “stories” or roots, culture, and who they are, they will develop connections with one another, creating relationships that will grow stronger with each bond. Nanakuli does have large community events such as Hoolaulea or May Day, or sporting events, which involve a lot of social interaction. But these events do not sufficiently allow people to share who they are.
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Creating more opportunities for the community to share their stories will allow people to realize that they have more things in common at a deeper level. Encouraging these relationships to build and grow throughout the community will improve the health of the community, however there will still be wounds present within the community. Wounds hurt, no one wants them, and they can often not be properly taken care of but they do allow people to experience community healing. Nanakuli has been given the standards of bad education, domestic violence, poverty, and low success. People often submit themselves to these standards and become ashamed of who they are. This starts an act of seclusion from dominant society and people start to feel a low sense of self worth. They become wounded, begin to search for healing, and through this process they can also find each other and begin to heal together. Another community activist from Kalihi, Jeffrey Acido, wrote about healing his own community, and he shares that, “I can only stand with other oppressed peoples when I understand my own oppression. I stand with the oppressed only because I too am oppressed. My soul and body move only because in order for me to heal the Other, I too must heal” (270). He claims that my people within the community need to heal themselves from the wounds that they experienced first with full understanding in order to help others with similar wounds. With this in mind, I need to heal myself from feeling ashamed about whom I am. Doing so allows me to help others, so that they too can help others to create a healthier community. However we are challenged by society’s value on independence over community. Society advocates this mindset of needing to be independent in this “survival of the fittest” world, but surviving alone can be very difficult. Children start off going to elementary school, then as early teenagers they enter intermediate school, then transfer to high school, and from this point they search for their place in this world. Society says that to be successful, college is the choice to make, but this success mainly satisfies oneself. Self-gratification is promoted by society because they say if you are a strong competitor in this society, you are able to survive in this world. In other words, independent became the new community. However this is not true according to Acido because he states that, “we fail to see that woundedness is not something that we should avoid, but rather an experience that allows us to move with empathy, to bridge with others, and to support each other’s healing” (270). Being purely independent does not allow you to be healed by others because you say that you have what it takes to survive alone. In reality this world founded by society is cruel and we all develop wounds that we want to heal. We should not look at wounds as something to hide and kept from others but rather to find others that are wounded, then bond through healing and grow together. Having people heal one another of their wounds builds a community filled with relationships and bonds strong enough to be recognized as family. My wounds of feeling ashamed of who I am allows me to understand my struggle and improve the health of my community, Nanakuli. We may not be the ideal community but that does not mean we should not remain tangled with the ideals of society. We need to experience the struggle, heal, and help others heal with empathy in order to develop a healthier community in this forever-complicated world. Being wounded and not fully healed is not a bad thing, but rather
an opportunity to heal others. My personal understanding of my wounds allows me to heal those that are wounded like me, with empathy. Sharing my experiences, providing help, and creating relationships with people in Nanakuli will create strong ties within the community that will ultimately make us family.
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~~~ Works Cited Acido, Jeffery. “Praying for Mendedness.” The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions. Eds. Aiko Yamashiro and Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua. Honolulu: Biographical Research Center, 2014. 265-271. Print. Mahi, Dawn. “Kalihi Calls.” The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions. Eds. Aiko Yamashiro and Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua. Honolulu: Biographical Research Center, 2014. 60-67. Print.
We are more than just a camera Cameras simply capture the light But we can also capture the dark Cameras simply focus on the subject But we focus on the foreground, background, and everything in-between Cameras simply save images But we process and analyze any type of input
I Am More Than a Camera
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I take pictures Sometimes when I don’t even want to My capability to capture darkness cannot be avoided The dark leaks into my lens Taking over the beautiful picture Leaving specks of light Like the night sky Stars shimmering like beautiful bits of light Struggling to reach me Trying to guide me in this confusing journey Sometimes they do But the bright false lights of this small world blind me I can’t see the stars! Where are they!? I know they’re still there Forever fighting against the false lights and the darkness I know that the stars are still there They have to be So why am I focused on the false lights? Clearly the stars are better Just walk away from the false lights right? NO!!! They follow me like watch lights at prisons But they always find me It aint that easy Nothing is easy Everything is hard If there’s one difficulty, then there’s no such thing as hard or easy It’s not hard or easy to take pictures I just take pictures
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www.hawaiireview.org Kevin Bechayda was raised in Nānākuli, a small community on the leeward side of Oʻahu. He attended Nanakuli High and Intermediate School and graduated as the class of 2014’s valedictorian. Currently, he is enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at West Oʻahu to obtain a degree in humanities with a concentration in creative media. His goal is to produce media that documents and spreads awareness about important situations and stories in his community, which will ultimately unite everyone as family.
Hawai‘i Review Staff, 2013-2015
Anjoli Roy, Editor in Chief Kelsey Amos, Managing Editor Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Design Editor No‘ukahau‘oli Revilla, Poetry Editor David Scrivner, Fiction Editor
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