Life lately: Listening, learning, and embracing my anger

Sep 15

This past week was jam-packed with events — a symposium, a public talk, a night market, a work day — and opportunities to reconnect with old friends and build pilina with new ones. The students that I serve through Nā Hokua are three weeks into their fall 2024 semester within the University of Hawaiʻi system, and while a few of them feel like they’ve got their feet under them, others are still looking to root themselves and develop a routine that supports the demands of school. To these students, I often remind them that the system, as it stands, is against them. In many ways, undergraduate colleges and universities were designed to benefit the life circumstances of students who are young (18–22), unwed, and without children. Therefore, when my students report getting a “low” grade on a quiz, I tend to contextualize that grade with multiple factors that contributed to that mark so they avoid internalizing negative feelings.

I share this because there were a couple of moments this past week when I remembered these interactions and brought my students’ stories into spaces of listening and learning. I had the opportunity to attend the Fall 2024 Early College Symposium sponsored by Kamehameha Schools’ Kaiāulu. I got to learn more about different Early College programs offered at various colleges in the UH system and collaborations with Hawaiian-focused charter schools and kula kaiapuni. The symposium’s organizers also put together two student panels on the perceptions of early college offerings at Kāpaʻa High School on the island of Kauaʻi and the schooling and transitional experiences of formerly incarcerated students enrolled in Chaminade University. After hearing testimony from high-achieving youth and older, system-impacted adults, I left with a renewed purpose to dismantle educational, social, and economic disparities throughout the P–20 pipeline. I continue to ruminate on the stories of the older students because they spoke to the power of high expectations and the significance of humanizing rhetoric.

Like the men from the second panel, some of my students went through Hawaiʻi’s K–12 system without being told by teachers that they “believe in them.” That they “can do this.” That they can graduate and go to college. The messaging, both explicitly and implicitly, was largely negative. Whether unintended or not, these students internalized these messages and their negative meanings. As a result, they reported struggling with school because they didn’t feel like they belonged. They didn’t think their teachers cared about them. These feelings only magnified for those who were sentenced to prison and forced to endure social isolation and dehumanizing discourses and behaviors. The most profound moment of this symposium for me was hearing the three system-impacted men on the student panel articulate a critical consciousness about the schooling system’s intersection with the prison-industrial complex in response to an audience question about whether they believe the U.S. views education as a basic human right. It was a resounding “no” from the panelists, and their lived experiences speak to a reality of being made to feel like their ability to receive a college education while in prison was a privilege, not a right.

I carried these stories and the experiences from the Early College Symposium with me into a public talk held on UH Mānoaʻs campus in celebration of American Quarterly’s special Issue launch honoring Haunani-Kay Trask. The talk “‘We Are Not American…’ Still” featured statements by authors who contributed pieces to the special issue. It was a wonderful space to be in, to just sit and listen to scholar activists and community leaders critique the U.S. and the settler state of Hawaiʻi for the inequitable realities that many Indigenous Peoples and Communities of Color find themselves in today.

I ended the weekend with a work day at a community loʻi kalo, spending time in ʻāina and reconnecting with students and friends who have dedicated their lives to aloha ʻāina on an everyday basis. In the moments of solitude while picking weeds and reshaping mounds, I reflected on this busy week and felt a deep sense of gratitude for the ability to occupy listening and theorizing space, to learn from students with experiences that diverge heavily from mine. I feel humbled that I get to call myself an educational coach and work with college students who balance so much kuleana. I won’t lie, by Sunday, I was absolutely exhausted, and I have a mounting list of to-dos that need my attention before Monday.

But I also feel deeply inspired, grounded, and frankly, angered by the implications of all the stories of oppression, of dehumanization, of continued struggle. Thus, my anger is productive. As the powerful and dangerous poet and warrior Audre Lorde (1981) asserted, Women of Color have many uses of anger, one of which is to reconstruct. I keep this anger close, knowing that it can fuel my activism. In closing her brief statement on her contribution to the 2024 special issue, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio shared an excerpt that didn’t make it to the final draft of her published essay. She wrote of her perception of Haunani-Kay Trask as a fearless, formidable aunty, and her realization later in life that this aunty may have felt scared when she challenged Native Hawaiians and the Lāhui Hawaiʻi by uttering her now infamous proclamation “We are not American! We will die as Hawaiians” in front of thousands attending the centennial of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom at ʻIolani Palace in 1993. However, in watching this recording, another emotion is clear in this powerful speech: anger.

I heard this anger in the testimony of the students at the Early College Symposium. I hear the anger in my students’ voices when they recount all the ways the university system is stacked against them. I feel this anger building in me when I listen and learn of the lived experiences of my community. I embrace this anger, knowing that it serves a greater purpose: to generate change that will awaken and liberate people to the realities of how we got here.