Waikiki Dreams

How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture

Patrick Moser

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Paperback

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English

University of Illinois Press
11 June 2024

History of the Americas; Social & cultural history; Ethnic studies; Indigenous peoples; Sociology: sport & leisure

Series: Sport and Society

Despite a genuine admiration for Native Hawaiian culture, white Californians of the 1930s ignored authentic relationships with Native Hawaiians. Surfing became a central part of what emerged instead: a beach culture of dressing, dancing, and acting like an Indigenous people whites idealized.

Patrick Moser uses surfing to open a door on the cultural appropriation practiced by Depression-era Californians against a backdrop of settler colonialism and white nationalism. Recreating the imagined leisure and romance of life in Waikīkī attracted people buffeted by economic crisis and dislocation. California-manufactured objects like surfboards became a physical manifestation of a dream that, for all its charms, emerged from a white impulse to both remove and replace Indigenous peoples. Moser traces the rise of beach culture through the lives of trendsetters Tom Blake, John “Doc” Ball, Preston “Pete” Peterson, Mary Ann Hawkins, and Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison while also delving into California’s control over images of Native Hawaiians via movies, tourism, and the surfboard industry.

Compelling and innovative, Waikīkī Dreams opens up the origins of a defining California subculture.

By: Patrick Moser
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 540g
ISBN: 9780252088018
ISBN 10: 0252088018
Series: Sport and Society
Pages: 316
Publication Date: 11 June 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Patrick Moser is professor of writing and French at Drury University. He is the author of Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture and the editor of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing.

Reviews for Waikiki Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture

“Moser challenges conventional surf historiography in ways that are desperately needed. Mainstream surf narratives frequently point out the influence of Native Hawaiian culture on California surf culture, but typically without critical analysis. Moser upends these narratives by bringing in Indigenous scholarly perspectives to explain the dynamics of cultural appropriation in a refreshingly updated approach.”--Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock