This talk by Dr. Joyce Pualani Warren will examine texts by Prince Alexander Liholiho, Samuel Kamakau, King Kalākaua, and Queen Lili‘uokalani to trace a strand of nineteenth-century Kanaka Maoli literary nationalism which embraced figurative blackness as a means to combat settler colonial notions of physical, racial blackness as a trait that made Kānaka Maoli unfit for sovereignty. Through these texts, our kūpuna point us towards the fecundity and potential of Pō, and Kanaka Maoli constructions of blackness as a constitutive, foundational element of Indigeneity.


Dr. Joyce Pualani Warren is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her research and teaching interests include Kanaka Maoli and Native Pacific literatures, ethnic American literatures, Pō, blackness, Indigeneity, diaspora, Mana Wahine,
short fiction, and speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in American Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Amerasia Journal.