| It's said that Honolulu's business district that has never seen anything like it: live Hawaiian music during lunch hour on Wednesdays, attracting a gaggle of downtown ladies who drop in and offer spontaneous bursts of hula. Under that same roof, the event also brings together regular Hawaiian craft demonstrations, the finest coffees and a sumptuous assortment of locally made items from books to gourds to jams and jellies and clothing. At the opening party for this lively enterprise, people spilled out onto Merchant Street, and the sounds of Hawaiian music and merriment reached all the way to 'Iolani Palace'. | 
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| It was an auspicious beginning for Native books
& Beautiful Things. Open since last October, it quickly established
itself as a shopping mecca and uniquely democratic business concept among
people who love to make, buy and give Hawai'i-themed items. People who have
scrupulously avoided the downtown area are now making special trips to this
new niche, and those who work in the neighborhood are feeling a new friendliness
in the air. It happened, says Maile Meyer, with an uncanny swiftness.
The week after meeting over dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Kalihi, she recalls, Native Books & Beautiful Things, a hui (association) of 18 craftspeople and visual artists, signed for a space at the site of the former Lion Coffee House. The setup also gave Meyer's 6-year-old book distribution business, Native Books, its first-ever retail outlet. "Native Books manages the space and takes care of any issues that affects the group" explains Meyer. "I do all the promotions handle the lease, pay the employees. I want the others to worry as little as possible about things that don't interest them." Participants set up their own prices, displays and inventory, defining their spaces in the shared room by what they craft and how they display it. Meyer's Native Books, with some of its 900 titles arranged along one wall, sets the tone immediately. Books on Hawaiian language, cultural history, natural history, hula, mythology and legends are all there, and more. Some of the books are by single-title publishers, Hawaiian families with unique stories to tell. Some are 19th-century Hawaiian classics that have been packaged and re-issued for an increasing eager audience. Like the Bishop Museum Press, where Meyer worked until 1990, Native Books has played a pivotal part in stimulating interest in these books and increasing their availability. Appropriately enough, Native Books began with the Hawaiian Leadership Development Conference in Hilo, led by Meyer's sister, Manu. "She urged me to bring some books, so I showed up with one or two samples of what I considered the core of Hawaiian books. I brought back 80 to 100 direct mail orders." The orders indicated that 'here was a hunger for books about and by Hawaiians: authors like David Malo, Samuel Kamakau, books like the Hawaiian Dictionary and, says Meyer, "anything by Mary Kawena Pukui." Native Books soon became available through mail order, at craft fairs, and at Hawaiian cultural and fund-raising events. "I'd be happy if I didn't have any books to sell," she muses. "That would mean that people know what's in the books, that we are living the culture. Books are remnants of Hawaiian culture. If people internalize their content and live it, they'll make their own history. Growing things, dancing the hula, observing the stars and ocean, going fishing, giving thanks, honoring the elders -- that's living the culture. "I feel what matters is not the thing you're seeing, but your relationship to it." | ||||||||||
Reprinted from Spirit of Aloha Magazine, courtesy of Honolulu Publishing Co. Ltd.[HOME] [NATIVE BOOKS] [OTHER HAWAII LINKS] [ORDER FORM]