Confined to his room for 42 days as punishment for an illegal duel, French soldier Xavier de Maistre took his homebound restlessness to the extreme, writing a detailed “travel journal” aptly titled A Journey Around My Room, published in 1794. Fast-forward to today—a year into the global pandemic—when writing about one’s room actually seems like a reasonable way to pass the time. By now, we’ve all had a taste of de Maistre’s predicament and have been looking at our homes and communities more deeply. Luckily, we can still explore more than our rooms and branch out into our island chain through the instant travel portal of films and literary works.
The titles presented here aren’t brand-new best sellers or current award nominees. Instead, we selected them for the unique and sometimes overlooked windows they open into the Islands through compelling characters and diverse perspectives. Together, they create a prism that reflects many sides of life in Hawai‘i—from issues of change and identity to the legacy of our past, and from our relationship with visitors to laugh-out-loud humor that reminds us to take everything in stride. In these works, we can discover our home, and ourselves, anew.