Melissa Llanes Brownlee: English as a colonising language

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch and Moon City Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story melissallanesbrownlee.com. We discussed the progressive disappearance of Hawaiian as a consequence of colonization, the role played by pidgin in Hawaiian society, how it is a refuge from the dominant, American culture, and a stigma at the same time, how English is both a colonizing language and the only mean to tell the truth about Hawaii to a worldwide audience.