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Bestselling Author and Public Radio Favorite Sarah Vowell Offers "Unfamiliar Fishes" (Encore presentation.)

By Rich Fisher

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-973415.mp3

Tulsa, Oklahoma – (Please note: This show first aired earlier this year.) On today's program, we check in with writer and "This American Life" mainstay Sarah Vowell, whose latest book is "Unfamiliar Fishes." In this nonfiction work --- which, once again, offers her trademark historical storytelling that's as funny and savvy as it is smart and engaging --- Vowell looks back at the pivotal year of 1898. During that year, she notes, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded Cuba as well as the Philippines. It was the year when the U.S. first flexed its imperialist/expansionist muscle on a worldwide scale --- the year we became an international superpower. Vowell's account focuses on the conflicted experience of Hawaii in this regard --- which is to say, the natives vs. the missionaries, the conquered vs. the conquerors. As a reviewer of this book has noted in Publishers Weekly: "Recounting the brief, remarkable history of a unified and independent Hawaii, Vowell, a public radio star and bestselling author, retraces the impact of New England missionaries who began arriving in the early 1800s to remake the island paradise into a version of New England. In her usual wry tone, Vowell brings out the ironies of their efforts: while the missionaries tried to prevent prostitution with seamen and the resulting deadly diseases, the natives believed it was the missionaries who would kill them: 'they will pray us all to death.' Along the way, and with the best of intentions, the missionaries eradicated an environmentally friendly, laid-back native culture (although the Hawaiians did have taboos against women sharing a table with men, upon penalty of death, and a reverence for 'royal incest'). Freely admitting her own prejudices, Vowell gives contemporary relevance to the past as she weaves in, for instance, Obama's boyhood memories. Outrageous and wise-cracking, educational but never dry, this book is a thought-provoking and entertaining glimpse into the U.S.'s most unusual state and its unanticipated twists on the familiar story of Americanization."