Native Hawaiian teacher, author, filmmaker, and transgender woman Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu started with a song in the Niʻihau dialect, and then a greeting in English: “I bring you all the aloha,” she said. “I made sure to wear our national flag because I only have one mainland, and that land is Hawaii.”
Wong-Kalu was a featured speaker at the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June 25. In conversation with ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada, Wong-Kalu discussed what it means to be māhū, her recently released picture book Kapaemahu, and what advice she would give to young people in these contentious times.
“Māhū is a blessing,” said Wong-Kalu. In Hawaii, the term is used to describe a traditional third-gender person who occupies the space between kane (male) and wahine (female). But Wong-Kalu said the meaning goes much deeper than the definition.
“Back home you can be one, or the other, or both,” she said. “Western minds struggle with the understanding that there’s something beyond the physicality.”
“[Māhū] speaks to mind, heart, and spirit,” Wong-Kalu added. “[Māhū] Hawaiians in our homeland, we are loved on, celebrated, respected.”
Wong-Kalu noted that in her community, people are not obsessed with genitalia or sexual preference—nor are they emboldened and empowered to inflict harm on people who don’t fit a gender binary. Instead, the focus is on kulana (the role, title, or place one holds in society) and kuleana (how well a person fulfills their responsibility).
Being māhū often means being “the glue between everybody,” said Wong-Kalu, who described herself as the auntie in her family who takes care of the elders and watches the children. “We’re the ones that make people’s birthdays, funerals, and other life celebrations and observances,” she said.
Kapaemahu (Kokilia, June), a picture book that Wong-Kalu cowrote with Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson (and illustrated by Daniel Sousa), tells the Indigenous legend of four māhū individuals who brought healing practices from Tahiti to Hawaii in the 15th century. The healers are honored with a gift of four boulders, but as colonizers take over the islands, the sacred stones are forgotten until the 1960s.
“This book is for all ages and, in fact, I used it in my prison class,” said Wong-Kalu. “They enjoyed the book because it gives a doorway, it creates access, to yet one more story of our people. Our stories have been suppressed, hidden, and denigrated for so long.”
The book is written in Niʻihau, a dialect representing the furthest-occupied island in Hawaii’s chain. “It is the last island that is still a Native-speaking island,” said Wong-Kalu, who noted that by the 19th century, Christian missionaries came to the islands and standardized the Hawaiian language. “This is my family that taught me how to speak in our mother tongue.”
When Pelayo-Lozada asked Wong-Kalu what message she had for LGBTQ+ youth in these current times, Wong-Kalu responded: “No free rent.” Meaning that they shouldn’t let negative influences occupy space in their mind.
“Focus on your skill, focus on your talent, focus on your abilities, and simply live your truth,” she said. “For the next person that doesn’t like it, give them no time and waste no energy.”
