Customer Reviews

The Haole Substitute

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was an entertaining look at the first year of a young teacher in a new culture. It uses humor to make the hardships he faced bearable. Novak has a wonderful ability to use simple language to convey complex situations. He shows that even though we have different cultures and values, basically we share a lot of similarities. I'm looking forward to a great movie!

I had wasted away 5 primetime years (21-26) of my life working in "Corporate America" always dreaming of teaching. A surfer buddy of mine suggested I pick up "The Haole Substitute" by Walt Novak. Novak's book gave me the push to go back to school, finish up my California teaching credential and I am now teaching High School outside of Santa Cruz, CA, coaching the mighty Warriors of Westmont High baseball team and spending my summers surfing up and down the California coast. A must read for people looking to live to work rather than work to live. Thanks Walt!

Hawaii has often been referred to as a melting pot... but as this book bluntly illustrates it's not utopia. Kids will be kids and acts that would be unthinkable to most adults occur on a daily basis in a public school somewhere on Oahu. I speak from my own experience as a high school student in leeward Oahu.

It doesn't take a new student from the mainland long to learn what a haole is.. especially if that is the ethnic category he falls into... and I went to one of the better public schools in the state. However, I think it is important to remember that this is a book about children and being read by adults, who being adults will try to rationalize a child's act without remembering that children often need little or no reason to behave in a rebellious manner.. they just need to believe they can get away with it and that it will help them acheive respect from their peers. Children don't feel the need to be tactful in getting what they want.. so absent of any effective deterrent they will act out by whatever means necessary including physical and verbal assault. Finally, children (as was my case) often have no control over where they live and attend school and are dependents of their parents.... school is often the only place children feel they can assert their independence and act out. It definitely made me much more aware of my surroundings.. but at the same time they were some of the best years of my life and I have no regrets.

Walt Novak's weakly disguised attempt (His main character is named Paul Kodak) to poke fun at himself and his "tough" times substitute teaching at public high schools in Hawaii inevitably pokes fun at the non-white culture he "endures" in Hawai'i.

His "beefed-up" short story presents us with a dilemna: should we simply take the satire at face value and laugh heartily at his zany caricatures of local Japanese, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Filipino people?

I'm not sure all of you potential readers will laugh; in fact, I'm mortified that you may. Novak's principal narrator gets all the "talking space" in this novella, while all of his ethnic stereotypes are either voiceless or made ridiculous.

Yes, you say, but this is supposed to be a fun, humorous novel! It has a cool surfing Walt Novak on the cover! It is about the idyllic island paradise of Hawaii! Nevertheless, the fact that people NOT from and from Hawaii will read this book and draw distorted generalizations about people living in Hawaii based on Novak's idiosyncratic musings is certainly no laughing matter.

Please, save your money and go to a comedy club instead.

The author is definately Haole relating his story from a Haole point of view. It was interesting as a Hawaiian of blood and Hawaiian raised, to view the island, school system and local people though Haole eyes.