Sharks In The Time Of Saviors

Kaui starts the chapter expressing uncertainties about her life—her sexuality, her job on a small farm, her broke family, and the fact that she has only “half a college degree” (343). She is surprised to see her mother smoking pot, and they share a long conversation. Malia tells Kaui that she and Augie failed their kids: “Dean was only ever a basketball player. We didn’t push him hard enough to be anything else. Noa died because [...] we didn’t understand what he needed” (346). Malia then plays the ukulele, which makes Kaui revisit her hula passion.

Hoku gives Malia a tour of his farm. Malia describes it as “all aquaponics and biodigesters, build-outs just getting started for a solar array and micro-windmills that hang like tree leaves and spin the smallest breezes” (354).

Malia is impressed by the farm and thinks it’s good for Kaui. She notes that she’s “never seen Kaui this way, never felt her this way: the whole farm, the whole situation, like an extension of the tendons and muscles of her body” (356). She notices Augie standing amid bins of kalo (the Hawaiian word for taro) and sees that the plants have a healing effect on him.