That said, the cartoons are fun, and the authors especially do a good job of making fun of Hawaiian culture's over the top fear of Samoans. (Another, tamer version of this could be seen in the 1970's song 'Mr.

However, this also shows at the baseline how Hawaiian culture reacts to other nationalities in Hawaii, without any politically correct papering over, which is a useful tool to understand such a diverse culture. It's also very much written with a high school-age audience in mind it's very focused on sexuality and incorporates casually racist slang (especially toward Japanese) in a way that may offend people who are more mature, or, well, who are Japanese. Rather than giving you an overview of the language as a whole, it shows the urban Honolulu dialect circa 1985, and it's clearly written for locals as an inside joke rather than for haoles like me wanting to learn about the language. I felt this book was a mixed bag when I actually read it, however. Score! (Also, visit that bookstore if you're on Kaua'i.

I finally found a big stack of them at the Talk Story bookstore in Hanpepe on our last day. I spent the rest of the trip trying to find a bookstore on Kaua'i so that I could buy it. One of those magazines also recommended this book. While reading through tourist magazines, I learned of the existence of Hawaiian pidgin, a creole of languages developed by the different ethnicities that came to work on the 20th century sugar plantations, and I was intrigued. I took my first trip to Hawaii in April 2017.

Pidgin to da max