Essay 3

“Sometimes I secretly wish to be a haole.” When we examine Lovey, we notice that schooling and media go hand in hand in shaping her identity and this has a negative and detrimental impact on her life. She is taught by the media to act like and to worship Shirley Temple, and she is hounded by her teacher to act like a proper American by speaking “Standard English not pidgin English.” As we read through these three stories it is easy to follow Lovey’s quest to be the perfect American child but no matter how hard she tries, she fails.

I think that Lovey along with many of the other children are being molded and shaped by their teacher. Mr. Harvey tries to get the kids to act like Americans and due to the fact that Hawaii is such a remote part of the United States, and they have no idea what normal Americans look and act like, the only thing that they have to use as a guide is the television and the stars that they see on it. Lovey over compensates for her appearances and actions because she is an outsiders among outsiders.  

Lovey’s entire life is affected by outside sources, more so than the average girl her age for a number of factors. Every Sunday morning, Lovey and her best friend Jerry watch Shirley Temple act on TV, “I used to wish was just like her, with perfect blond ringlets and pink cheeks and pout lips, bright eyes and a happy ending every Sunday and crying ‘cause of being happy, I mean real happy.” Shirley Temple is an American Icon, one that every little girl, including Lovey, wished they could be.  Lovey wants her perfect life, perfect family and perfect looks and for a Japanese girl living in a post WWII era on Hawaii, that was hard to come by. “We weren’t good enough for the kind of love that Shirley had every Sunday, the kind of love that makes the bottom lip quiver and mothers rush through crowds to hug you at the end of a movie.”

In school, Lovey is constantly reminded of her “miserable” life and her empty future by her teacher Mr. Harvey. Mr. Harvey is a white teacher in Hawaii, attempting to make the children’s lives better by teaching the proper way to speak, read and write. He constantly reminds them of their bleak life ahead with his speech, ‘No one will want to give you a job. You sound uneducated. You will be looked down upon. You’re speaking low-class form of good Standard English. Continue, and you’ll go nowhere in life. Listen, students, I’m telling you the truth like no one else will. Because they don’t know how to say it to you. I do. Speak Standard English, DO NOT speak pidgin. You will only be hurting yourselves.’ Mr. Harvey’s philosophy was to scare the children into learning his curriculum to be a model American but for Lovey, it only put doubt in her head as to whether she would or could ever be Americanized.

From Mr. Harvey’s teachings and her classmates’ jokes, Lovey knew that she and her family were different. Lovey was ashamed of her family and their traditions, the disgusting food and the way her father dressed. She was forced to eat her grandmothers’ mustard cabbage stew and watch her suck the eyeballs out of fish. “I don’t tell anyone, not even Jerry, how ashamed I am of pidgin English. Ashamed of my mother and father, the food we eat,… The place we live… The car we drive… The clothes we wear… and the same shoes until it breaks.” All of this makes her think less of herself, making it seemingly impossible to be a normal human being, let alone having the life of Shirley Temple. In school the other kids in the class make Lovey’s life miserable. Not only does she get made fun of for her looks but also for her ancestors. She is constantly being made fun of for being Japanese and for the bombing of pearl harbor. With these things pounded into her head, Lovey begins to believe that she is an outsider and with that pressure she starts to alienate herself.

She is so distraught over these things that she even talks about committing suicide, though these thoughts are never more than that. She is asked by Mr. Harvey to write her own obituary and describe how she wants to die. Lovey finds this to be a very hard assignment because that would mean that her life had a sad ending and not a happy one like her idol Shirley who always has a joyful ending and the only thing she can come up with is that she does not want to be deaf or blind. She is also asked by Mr. Harvey to write about what her life would be like if her parents died in a train wreck. Obviously this too does not fit in with her vision of a perfect ending.

“No way will we ever be on The Checkers and Pogo Show. Never. Only the rich Honolulu kids. We would never be there anyway. Never.” Watching the TV shows, gives Lovey the impression that everything has to have a happy ending. Lovey sees all of the kids on the show as perfect little angels who are so cute and she dreams of what it would be like but she knows she will never be there because she is not cute enough or rich enough.  Lovey believes that because she rarely has happy endings in her life that she does not have a perfect or even a good life. There is always something better out there and she doesn’t know how to get it so all she can do is dream about it.

In an attempt to live out her dreams Lovey decides that she wants to get a perm. A perm to change her looks, to be more American, to be like the people she sees on TV: Farah Fawcett, Angie Dickinson, and Shirley Temple. She believes that with a whole new look she will be able to change other peoples perception of her and that will change her perception of herself. Not only does it backfire, but it makes her look like another star she sees on TV though not as flattering as the ones mentioned before: Oompah Loompah.

I think the affect of outside sources like schooling and media were more prominent in Loveys’ life compared to those around her, because those were her only sources of information. She deemed her life so invaluable, and she was ashamed of her parents so she shut them out and used outside sources to supplement her information intake and her social abilities. Many children are affected by outside sources and these feelings are enhanced when they are told that they are not good enough, when they are always talked down upon and in cases where children are singled out, the effect is enhanced.