Kuleana
A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jun 10, 2025
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Set in one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, Kuleana is the story of an award-winning journalist’s effort to hold on to her family’s ancestral Hawaiian lands—and find herself along the way.
“A powerful story of land, belonging, loss, and survival that challenges us all to think about what we are responsible for.” —Rebecca Nagle, bestselling author of By the Fire We Carry
From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past.
When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire. When Sara returns to Maui from the mainland, she reconnects with her great-uncle Take and uncovers the story of how much land her family has already lost over generations, centuries-old artifacts from the temple, and the insidious displacement of Native Hawaiians by systemic forces.
Part journalistic offering and part memoir, Kuleana interrogates deeper questions of identity, legacy, and what we owe to those who come before and after us. Sara’s breathtaking story of unexpected homecomings, familial hardship, and fierce devotion to ancestry creates a refreshingly new narrative about Hawai‘i, its native people, and their struggle to hold on to their land and culture today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Hawaiian word for responsibility—particularly as it pertains to caring for the land—lends this stirring debut memoir from former Axios editor-in-chief Goo its title. Goo's family kept a 90-something-acre piece of Maui, a small chunk of a much larger gift from King Kahmeamea III, under their ownership for nearly 200 years. In 2019, however, Goo's father revealed in an email that property taxes had jumped 500%, and he didn't know how to pay. Suddenly, like so many other Native Hawaiians, Goo's family had to compete with wealthy investors from the mainland. Goo puts her journalism background to good use while researching the land's history, her account of which doubles as a timeline of Hawaii's shift away from traditions of shared ownership. Meanwhile, she navigates thorny intergenerational dynamics within her family, as various factions fight to choose the best path forward. Along the way, Goo interviews Hawaiian locals who share a passion for land stewardship and keeping Hawaiian culture alive, including a professor of Hawaiian studies who encourages her to pray to her ancestors. Ending on a note of fragile hope, Goo's heartrending saga serves as an urgent reminder that Indigenous culture is alive and braided with modern life, and that all Americans have a role in its survival.
