Back

I often describe my work not as science fiction but as
'stylized journalism' with futuristic characteristics.

The art, stories and gameplay of Neofeud are a direct reflection of my upbringing and experiences as a Native Hawaiian STEM teacher for the underserved youth of Honolulu’s inner city. 3/?

Teaching robotics, programming, and sustainability is an often difficult, stressful, and even Kafka-esque endeavor - being in one of the richest, most beautiful places on Earth, yet dealing with families with working parents, who are living out of a van or sleeping on the street

It's hard trying to keep the kids out of gangs, off of drugs, and on a path towards better opportunities, such as the ones I had growing up in a slum area of paradise while going to an upscale private school - only cause dad taught there & we got free tuition (it's $30k a year)

Hawaii is known for its postcard, Corona-commercial scenery, but it is not all fun and sun for everyone who actually lives here. I grew up a Native Hawaiian on 'the not so nice side of the coconut trees' where the tour buses avoid. 6/?

My parents and parents' parents have lived in the poverty-stricken area of Kalihi-Palama, cleaning for, teaching the kids of, or dancing fake-plastic hula for the profit of mostly white/foreign millionaires and billionaires of Hawaii -- I am a third generation neo-feudal serf.

My friends in the neighborhood lived 20-to-a-house surviving on ramen and spam from foodstamps, just dirt
poor. On weekends we would run through the forest barefoot, playing games like, “rock war” which involves whipping rocks at each other and trying not to get bloodied. x/?

They were wild kids, but we had good
times building tree houses and cannonballing into “Tin Roof”, a big pond in the back of the valley. But then on Monday my siblings and I would pile into a cheap old
Toyota Corolla and dad would shuttle us off to an elite college prep school

Again - that he could only afford because he taught there and we got free tuition. (Obama's school, right nearby, is $30,000 a year). I was the one ghetto 'sprawler' amongst upper crust 'corpos' children. It was a horrific 12+ years.

At this school, everyone didn't have holes in their shoes, came in Mercedes and limos, and dodge*ball* was illegal, to avoid lawsuits. x/?

I was an overweight brown Hawaiian kid from the ghetto amongst a lot of wealthy “fairer”-skinned whites & Asians,
& as you might imagine, I was singled out, along class and race lines. Got made fun of for having old shoes, looking different. Dad's rusty beater vs their Mercedes.

In Gibsonian cyberpunk terms, it was like waking up in the
sprawl, and going to school in the Villa Straylight, then returning home to the sewer every night. x/?

I never learned a single word of Hawaiian in that
private school, with just a few coloring books about 'ancient
Hawaiians', who are gone now. The message I got from school, TV, movies was basically, "I'm an American, but not quite. Wrong color. Maybe 3/5 of an American."

The public schools teach even less. Hawaiian language itself was *illegal* to speak in Hawaii till 1986, & in 2018, a professor from Maui (Kalekoa Ka'eo) was arrested for speaking Hawaiian in a courtroom (despite Hawaiian being an official language here). https://splinternews.com/judge-issues-arrest-warrant-to-hawaiian-man-for-speakin-1822421239

The only words that the business and imperial interests want you to know in Hawaii is "Aloha" and "Mahalo". x/?

"Aloha" and here's a lei for you as you get off of your air conditioned plane with a fake Hawaiian woman on the side of it, owned by a white man in a mansion with a gaudy golden bird-of-paradise gate who makes 3 million a year. https://www.amazon.com/Native-Daughter-Colonialism-Sovereignty-Latitude/dp/0824820592

"Aloha" as you step into an air-conditioned tour bus, that then takes you to your air-conditioned, high-thread-count hotel to have mai-tais on artificial white sand beach & watch bastardizations of our sacred dances (hula) performed for $7.50 an hour with cellophane grass-skirts

"Mahalo", thank you for enjoying our starvation-wage prostitution of our culture, people, & island while we drive our 30-year-old Toyotas or take the bus back to the dilapidated favela & live 20-to-a-house, & fight with each other over the money we don't have for medical bills,

cry into our ramen and get diabetes, dying at 39.

This is what being indigenous Hawaiian has meant. It's meant having no idea who the hell you are. Because who you are has been obliterated.

x/?

It means commodified versions of yourself prostituted for the profit of foreign capitalists, and you forced to participate in your own for-profit humiliation. For 40 years of your life, till you die. x/?