Talk Story: Malia

How did Hawai‘i become your home?

Well, it’s the only thing I’ve ever known. I was born here. It was just me and my mom my entire life. And Hawai‘i has always been my safe space, it’s always been familiar walls, and familiar streets and roads, and familiar faces. Especially as I grow up and I meet more people and I leave my mother’s nest, aside from my own home with my mom, I’ve made other homes with other people and it definitely makes Hawai‘i where I’m from.

You’re headed to Philadelphia soon.

I am headed to Philly. Next week. First I’m going to Denver for National Poetry Slam and then instead of flying home to Hawai‘i, I’m going to go straight to Philly.

Why Philly?

The first time I went to Philadelphia I was 18 and it was for this national poetry competition called Brave New Voices. It was the first time in 18 years of my life that I had ever been around so many Black people—young Black people my age, as if I were to go to a high school on the continent, that’s what it felt like, like this is what it’s like to be a Black youth. And I loved it.

I grew up in Kalihi which has a lot of Filipino, Samoan, Micronesian counterparts and it was a culture shock.  Being in Philly was the first time that I ever felt that I was Black. It was very exciting. I didn’t realize that I had spent 18 years unable to identify with this part of me that is huge because I grew up with my Filipino mother and not my Black father. I loved it.

It was being able to go outside and see twenty other faces like mine. Your people make you who you are in a sense, right? When you’re Black and you have a Black parent, there are certain things you get taught about your characteristics, like you get taught how to do your hair, you learn how to take care of your skin. You learn these different things. I had never learned that from my Filipino mother. When I was in Philly my friends would teach me how to do my hair and it was nice. It was nice because they could relate to me in a way that was so personal and it was because we were Black. That’s why we could relate so personally and I thought it was so beautiful.

Does the way you were able to relate to those friends in Philly feel different from how you were able to relate to friends here in Kalihi where there is a big Filipino community?

Absolutely. I feel like what people, not everyone, but certain people, they have an idea about what Black is and what I am supposed to be as a Black person, a Black girl. I often get told “Oh, you sound very White. You’re not very hood.” And I don’t like being told that I’m not Black. It’s hard for me to hear because I am, for one. And two, I’m still learning and growing on my journey as a young Black woman. When people say those things to me I feel like it stunts me.

So Janet Mock in her first book talks about living in Kalihi and what the standard of beauty is. In every single community there is a different standard of beauty. And I definitely feel like in my life, in my experience in Kalihi, the standard of beauty was definitely Filipino women. It was definitely Filipino women who are very skinny, who have straight hair. That was always—since I was very young—the standard of beauty. Those were the girls who were being called beautiful and I would hear it all the time. It sucked because I am a Filipino woman, but I am not beautiful. And why am I not beautiful? Because I’m also a Black woman. That was the whole thing my entire life. I hated that I was Black because it meant I wasn’t beautiful in this community and it harbored a lot of anti-Blackness in me and it harbored a lot of hate for my hips and my hair and my skin. That’s why at Brave New Voices I was shook. Black women are beautiful.   

When I was preparing in 2014 to go to Philly for Brave New Voices there were so many conversations around Black Lives Matter and there were so many hashtags—#BlackGirlMagic— there were so many representations coming up and it was almost preparing me for BNV because I had already started to try to reclaim my body and try to reclaim my Blackness. Going to BNV elevated that. Extremely. It was all in the timing of that.

Were there cultural things that you weren’t prepared for when you first went to Philadelphia?

I will say, the amount of conversation about Black issues, much elevated, obviously, in a Black community—I was not used to that. I’m used to bringing it up versus it just being there, the standard. That was very pleasant for me. I honestly feel like Black people are so lit and so cool. And honestly, Black people are fun. We’re very good at gassing other people and hyping other people and being excited. That is what I love the most about the Black community, that we’re lit. I feel very much loved and accepted and embraced in that way. When you think about Black church, everybody is rejoicing and loving and supporting and shouting out. Yeah, my church here is not like that. Everybody is very quiet.

Do you feel that being a poet has given you a way to process some of your experiences in this community as Black woman balancing different parts of your identities?

Poetry. What is that? It’s words. It’s given me language. It’s given me words to name these things and to understand the context of what is happening. It gives me an opportunity to step back and critically analyze, “Why do I feel like this? What is happening?” I feel happy about that. When you’re in slam it’s like college without college. I’ve never been to college yet but I feel well educated. I do.  I feel well versed, I feel well informed. And that is literally because we talk and we listen and we discuss and that’s essentially what college is if you’re trying to learn about feminism or Blackness. So I do feel like poetry definitely played a part in schooling me. Definitely.

How did you come to poetry?

I can’t even imagine my life without spoken word. When I was very young I loved to talk, to speak, and converse, and listen to oral stories. I couldn’t really act or dance or sing. Nothing fit. When I discovered spoken word it was like “This works! This is me!” I can’t explain it. When something is just for you and it clicks. That’s what it was. It was like “I can do this. This is totally in my lane.” So I stuck with it. I started when I was a freshman in high school and I’m still doing it to this day. It’s been a minute. There are people who have been doing it forever, but it’s definitely my craft that I’m perfecting every single day.

Do you feel like the poetry community has given you access to other Black people here?

Oh, yes. I would not know so many people if I wasn’t in slam. I think slam is my connection to Black people, actually. Now that I think about it. Otherwise, I would not know Black people.

You mentioned Janet Mock who grew up here, Black and Kanaka Maoli in Kalihi, and now is very visible. I wonder if for you, being a performer and being visible has been a part of your thinking about Blackness.

Well, I talk about Janet Mock because Janet Mock is representation. I take that very seriously, understanding that when I go on stage I’m representing myself, and what that means is that I’m representing my community, my family, my people, and I take that very seriously. So does Janet. Everything that she does she does with intention. There is nothing reckless about it. It’s like, this is who I am and that’s so visible right now and it’s very serious. That’s how I function as well.

Representation is everything. If you cannot see yourself…that’s why I’m going to Philly. That’s why I’m trying to find myself because I saw somebody like me and I loved it. It’s a big deal. I feel like I’ve got to respect myself and what that means is that I carry myself in a certain way and I always understand who I am and where I come from.

I remember somebody once telling me, “Oh, poetry is so clichéd: The Asian person does an Asian poem. The Black girl does a Black girl poem. The trans person does a trans poem….” And it’s like, of course. Because you can’t be out here telling other people’s stories. You have to stay true to yourself. I’m not going to go up there and talk about being trans, right? That’s not my story. I can only tell you about me. And that’s to be safe. That’s to not be dangerous. When you have a platform, when you have an audience you have power. When people listen to you, you have power and you have to be very intentional about what you do and what you say. You can’t be reckless.

What kind of representation would have mattered for you as a young Black person growing up in Kalihi?

If I’m being honest, I think I would have really needed Black dolls. Toys were a big part of my childhood. I had so many. Toys R Us was my favorite place. And all my Barbies, all my Pollys, all my dolls were White. White, now that I think about it. If I were to go back in time as myself and visit my eight year old self and had seen all of the White dolls I was surrounded by I would think that’s kind of messed up and I would think that’s kind of weird. “Why doesn’t she have any brown or black dolls? What’s happening?” I think that played a big part in the insecurities I have today. I think I still carry all of these White Barbies with me in a way.

In high school I had a little Afro and I cycled. That was my thing. I had a pink fixie and I cycled everywhere. I think there was probably one other girl at Farrington who cycled, too, who had a fixie that she would bring to school. There wasn’t so many. What is so beautiful is that I had a Tumblr and my blog is so very Black-centric and exposed me to different types of Black people. I always felt like I was free to be me. Also because growing up there were no other Black people so I was free to be me without too many expectations. I was just doing me. I never felt the pressure to be a certain way because I knew what I wanted to do. And I was still trying to figure out myself. In retrospect, now that I have met Black people, now that I’m on my journey, I still don’t feel any pressure to be a certain way. I already bought my bike. It’s being sent to Philly as we speak. I feel lucky also because the Black people that I’ve met are through the poetry community it’s all kinds of Black people, it’s not just one type of person. There are so many types of young Black people doing whatever the heck they want to do and that obviously makes the culture very different for me.

How does your Filipino family feel about you embracing your Black identity in such a strong way?

It’s just me and my mom. I never met anybody else in my family. From the moment I left Philly in 2014 I wanted to go back and I would talk about it for three years. Now, three years in the making it’s happening. This is the climax of what has been destined! When I told my mom she was like “Okay, make sure you save money.” Now she’s like “Why are you going to Philly? You’re just going for a boy, aren’t you?” The thing about my mom is that I don’t talk to her about being Black. If anything I talk to her about being Filipino. I ask her questions, how it was growing up in the Philippines, the journey over here, because being Black is just not her experience, therefore I cannot talk to her about it.  It’s interesting because the way she got out of the Philippines was that she married a White man, he got her out of the Philippines and they had two kids who are half White, half Filipino. They’re the opposite of me, in a sense. They look like me but not really and they’re much older than me. After him my mom was just with Black men. She was living in Hawai‘i at this time, they divorced, her husband went back to Texas, he begged her for the kids so she let him take the kids, and she was just here. She ended up with a lot of Black military men. Very interesting. I asked her one day “Mom, why Black men? What happened? Why not Filipino men? White men?” and she said “I don’t know, they just liked me so I dated them.” Interesting. That’s a whole other conversation. Her experience is not a Black experience. She doesn’t really even know that I’m going because I want to be around more Black people. I don’t think it’s something she would understand or would relate to or cope with as just a Filipino woman. I’m going though! Goodbye!

What things from your upbringing and experiences in Hawai‘i do you anticipate you’re going to take with you to Philly?

In the poetry scene there, there are no poems about being Indigenous. No poems about being from a place that your people have been from for so long. For some Black people on the continent that’s a conversation that they don’t have, or maybe they don’t know how to have, or they have no context. Obviously, I’m not kanaka, but I am Filipino and Filipinos are Indigenous to the Philippines. I’m excited to start those conversations just by talking about my experience, the conversations I’ve had with my mother about her lineage in the Philippines and things like that.

That’s definitely a big thing for Hawai‘i, whenever we go to the continent for slams or shows we always have to do a Hawai‘i 101, you know? Okay, this is the history of the Queen, the Indigenous people here. Nobody knows. It’s just not something that is talked about. I always expect to exert a lot of energy to explain. It will be a learning experience for me to be in this new community and be one of the few people who has this in their mind. In the past few years there have been so many more opportunities to listen to Indigenous people and learn about their lineage and their stories and what that means for them as people from this place and what that means for my mother’s lineage as someone who has settled. It means a lot of processing, thinking and understanding how this all got set up.

Did you hear the term pōpolo growing up? What’s your take on it?

I never heard that word growing up and I think that is very telling about where I come from. The Indigenous story is not really a thing that I grew up hearing in Kalihi so I never got called pōpolo. I just learned what that word is. It just wasn't a part of my Kalihi culture. But, I did grow up around a lot of non-Black people who used the n-word around me. To refer to each other, but never to me. They would be in class and refer to each other. You know, hip-hop, the way Black people are portrayed, this word that is consistently in the music that they listen to, or they see it on TV, but they donʻt understand the history and where it really comes from.

I think people used it with each other and not with me because they knew I was Black. In the months before BNV as I was starting to get more into myself as a Black woman I would have to start calling people out and it was exhausting. They would say things like “Oh, you can't say that around Malia, she'll freak out.”  But I did it. And these are people who are maybe not as conscious of these things. Maybe they don’t care, but when they are around me they don’t do it because they know I’ll say something.

My friend who is a Filipina works at this restaurant has co-workers who are not Black who were calling her that word, the n-word. This is a Filipino girl saying to other non-Black people “Can you not call me that word?” It was interesting because they wouldn’t stop because she’s not Black. She talked about how it was really frustrating because they won’t stop calling her that. She doesn’t have the power, even though these other people are also Filipino. She can’t make them stop. But I can.

If there were a Black community in Hawai‘i, what would it feel like?

Hmm. I’ll just say things as they come to my mind: Food. Hair. Bicycling. Exercise. Art. An opportunity to be seen in the public. It would be so cool to have a bunch of Black people just hanging out. Visibly. At festivals, at the mall, there’s just Black people. At the university. A giant squad. It would be cool to have a Black bicycling gang!

As I prepare to leave and see what is happening, I’m really excited for the Black community in Hawai‘i because it makes me feel like I’m visible, like I’m seen here and that we can create spaces where we can see each other and also recognize the land that we’re on and also recognize where we come from and recognize all of the lineages that have brought us here together in this specific place, in this specific time. Growing up, I didn’t understand that being Black in Hawai‘i was a thing. I didn’t understand that it’s much more complicated than it seems and it’s much more different than what the media is telling us.  I’m excited because we are creating space here so we can have these conversations for ourselves. Nobody else can have these conversations. We can see each other and remember our stories. I’m sad about the timing that I won’t be here, but as I leave to do this exact thing, as I leave to find this exact community it’s happening. When I do come back and when I visit I will be able to see the progression.