Unfamiliar Fishes

Sarah Vowell's book Unfamiliar Fishes has left me with a mixture of sadness, excitement, and questions. Questions about how the United States and its government has left its manifest destiny all over the globe. Excitement, because  - well - I really wanted to visit Hawaii before, but now I really want to go. And sadness, because commerce and greed was the reason that we overthrew the Queen of Hawaii.

This book is about Hawaii, its history and natives, and how the United States took it over. And it is told in Vowell's quirky and wry style.  She goes into depth about the missionaries who came to this wild and unknown land from cold New England. They were not prepared too well for the voyage or for what they would find. But they managed to bring education and helped create a written language for the Hawaiian people. But island life was interrupted by commerce, farming and taking as much from the islands as the newcomers could get.

Vowell is what I would call a uncomfortable historian. (Howard Zinn does the same thing.) She tells you what happened to whom and when. She gives you details from different viewpoints. But what she shows you is that history is messy. Heroes are human. People make bad choices. And it can make the reader uncomfortable in their easy chair.

And perhaps that is the point. We are to question why we are choosing this route; is it really better policy? And for whom? These are things that Americans have forgotten about.These are questions that their ancestors and founding fathers raised and fought about. Today we seem to argue more about television reality shows.

Vowell gives us questions to ponder. And the more we know about history, the better we are to deal with the present. At least I hope so. A very good read.