To gain wider perspective and further develop my art, I belong to a number of forums, including some on cultural inclusivity and anti-racism. Among the topics we have recently been discussing is describing eyes. “Almond eyed” is so . . . . dated? Overused? Problematic? Look at an almond. Really look. Do you know anyone with eyes that look like that?
Anyway, I shared this anecdote about an event that happened a few years ago which inspired me to reexamine how I tell my stories:
In one of the stories, the Chief Makaliʻi has tiny squinting eyes because he is evil and always squinting around looking for things to tax. Because I am thinking of the Hawaiian imagery while telling the story, I don’t really “think the story” in English, even though I tell it in English.
The name “Makaliʻi” can be translated several ways:
“Eyes of the Chief”
“Tiny Eyes”
“Pleiades”
For this particular story, I use “Tiny Eyes” and “Pleiades” in a pun, somewhat the way the name of Xiaoping (小平) became Xiǎo Píngzi (小瓶子).
A few years ago, I was telling it and there was the cutest chubby-cheeked Chinese girl in the audience, and at the end of the story, I realized by the look on her face that she was really hurt by the description.
I cannot change the name of the chief, or the meaning of the name, because those are traditional in this story. So, I have changed the description to, “His people called him Chief Tiny Eyes for his habit of making his eyes hard and seeing the smallest thing to tax.”
Because we do a lot of interactions during the story, I have the children relax their faces and “look at something with love,” and then harden their faces and “look at something with jealousy.” Then we go back to our relaxed faces and listen to the story with love.
So, I am going through all of the stories I learned from my kūpuna (elders) and learning new ways to tell them.