Eating ‘Local’: The Politics of Post-Statehood Hawaiian Cookbooks

Abstract

An essay is presented which examines the two cookbooks "Hawaiian Cuisine" published by the Hawai'i State Society in 1963, and "The Hawaii Cookbook and Backyard Luau" by Elizabeth Ahn Toupin, published in 1964. It argues that the cookbooks can be understood by what Mary Louise Pratt describes as autoethnographic texts. It shows how the weaving of food recipes and history in the two cookbooks construct and encourage alternative understandings of Hawaiian society.