Review: "Local" by Jessica Machado

Local by Jessica Machado
Published January 2023 via Little A
★★★

Machado grew up local: born and raised in Hawaii by a mother from the mainland and a Portuguese-Hawaiian father, she was comfortable in her blended identity—not uncommon in Hawaii—but Hawaiian culture was not something that was overtly discussed or taught in schools. The victors write the history books, and in this case, it was likely white male Americans from the contiguous US writing about Hawaiian history.

I read this out of a curiosity about growing up in Hawaii—I know enough to know that it's not all surfing and aloha, that parts of Hawaii are very poor and that the university system is not particularly strong. Machado weaves a lot of history about Hawaii in (mostly things she learned later, learned and learned to appreciate), but this is as much an all-American coming-of-age book about family dysfunction as it is a book about growing up as a child of Hawaii.

Machado's mother fell ill when Machado was still quite young, and so much of the book floats in and out of Machado's mother's space as her mother is and isn't able to care for herself, to get out of bed, to reach her daughter. I admit that I found these sections difficult to read. I don't mean to criticise anyone involved (criticising people's actions is not what reading, or reviewing, memoir is for), but it's so clear that Machado as a writer can see her mother's isolation and sometimes desperation in a way that Machado as a young woman could not. I'm a different person than Machado, and I have a different relationship with my family, and I was considerably older than Machado when I lost a parent. I cannot make a comparison, but on the heels of a year when I thought about very little other than parental illness and loss, this was probably not the right book (or time to read this book) for me.