Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

pilau,

“We did a lot to get you there, you know.” She had to stick it in, right? She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to be guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential.

On Christmas I call again to talk. It’s gotten harder with my family now. Each of us with our own language of death and grieving and no avenue for translation.

“Whenever I’ve made a choice in my life, a real choice…” She leans back from my head. Touches my shoulder just for a second. “I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.”

Washburn excludes Augie’s narrative voice until the final chapter of the novel, after the return of his mental faculties. Why was Augie’s perspective omitted until the novel’s culmination, and why was it included then?

This was in the discussion questions at the end, and this was my question as well! Why wasn't the dad's voice included more throughout the book? Would love to hear any thoughts on this!

MJ: People are going to call this novel magical realist. I think one of the reasons Márquez rejected the term is that he said, “No, this is real.” I feel that way about writing the Caribbean as well. I’m not writing fantastical shit. Can you tell me about the relationship between the mythical and the mundane in this book? Is it magical realism, or is it just something else? KSW: The way you described it is the exact same way it felt to me when I was writing this. I knew I had to find a way to write it so that it didn’t feel so surreal or supernatural that people would start to think of it as fantasy, or that it would lose some of the impact or veracity that one might get from the characters. I wanted it to straddle that in a way that doesn’t make people think, Oh, everything here’s make-believe. But that’s just part of growing up there, man. Me and my friends would tell each other ghost stories about things like the night marchers. People in Hawai‘i still talk about the night marchers today. And the gods, like Pele, who is the goddess of fire and volcanoes. It’s something that you feel very viscerally there. People aren’t messing around when they talk about Pele, it’s not a little tale.