Migration as “Home”: Chasing Down Diasporic Traces

Across the continental United States, Hawaiians have migrated from Hawai'i, or the ancestral homeland of Hawaiians, and have created a burgeoning diaspora. More Hawaiians are also born on the continent in between the defining (and dominating) memory of Hawai'i and the everyday contexts of the mainland. In this essay, I speak from the vantage point as a member of the diasporic Hawaiian generation (mainland Hawaiian generation) and the daughter of a Native Hawaiian father who migrated for work. Here I narrate how the notion of “migration” itself has become a type of “home” for me after years of frenetic searching, nostalgic longing, and a quest to find my cultural “center” or “whole” as a Native Hawaiian born and raised off island. I share my own diasporic narratives of identity and belonging as a mainland Hawaiian and how being in the diaspora—in between and in connection to but away from my ancestral homeland—has become “home” for me.