Brown Bag Biography with Kayla Watabu

October 19, 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Mānoa Campus, Kuykendal 410 Add to Calendar

The Center for Biographical Research presents: /“Makawalu Perspectives on Silence: Reimagining the ‘Gaps’ as Stories” / Kayla Watabu, PhD student and Assistant Director of the Writing Center, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa /As stories are central for many Indigenous communities in nourishing relationships, the fracturing created by dispossession and disconnection can interrupt this kinship caretaking process, which results in silences that are often fraught with violence and trauma. In this presentation, Kayla Watabu considers her own journey in decolonizing her body and shares the process of tracing her mo‘okū‘auhau while reinterpreting the silences of her ancestors through multiple cultural and historical lenses. This act of makawalu traces a succession of abundant stories hidden within the silences, thereby writing and speaking them with ea and mana. / Kayla Watabu is a Ph.D. student in the English Department where she currently serves as the UH Mānoa Writing Centerʻs Assistant Director. Her article, titled “Silence as Storytelling: Makawalu Perspectives on the ‘Gaps’” (under review), explores how inherited silences within family histories can be reimagined by moving through cultural and historical lenses to ultimately transform those absences into abundance. / Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Center for Oral History, the Matsunaga Institute, Conflict and Peace Specialist, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Departments of American Studies, English, Ethnic Studies, and Sociology / Thursday, October 19 / KUY 410 / 12 noon to 1:15PM HST


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Center for Biographical Research, Mānoa Campus

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