What a fabulous book to read before taking a vacation to Hawai'i. Hula is about the daughter of an indigenous mother and unknown father that presents as white-skinned who uses hula dancing to anchor herself to her culture-- the othered population of Hilo that has been maligned by white colonization.

It's a fascinating angle with which to explore the topics of race, appropriation, rights of first possessors versus first colonizers... You know, totally irrelevant stuff. It also provides an extremely thorough history of Hawaii from the indigenous perspective. There's a lot going on as Hakes uses a collective voice to speak for Hilo as she journeys through space and time, with decent portions of the book written in dialect. Hakes did a superb job of portraying the individual intricacies of three generations of women as she grapples with identity in this sprawling family saga. Perhaps the history lesson became a little too expansive for my personal taste but the characters were so heartfelt, I felt a sense of loss when I said goodbye to them.