Lise-Michelle Childers of Native Books on Hawaiʻi, Diverse Voices Fellowship, and ulana lauhala

Our Bright Young Booksellers series continues today with Lise-Michelle Childers of Native Books in Hawaiʻi.

How did you get started in rare books?

Native Books is an independent bookstore and publisher that specializes in books about Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Native Books was started by Maile Meyer in 1990 in Kalihi, then through a series of moves and shifts into a co-op selling locally made crafts, cultural products, and clothing, alongside the books, became a shop called Nā Mea Hawaiʻi, now located at Ward Center in the ʻili (smaller land division) of Kūkuluaeʻo.

Native Books reopened in October of 2020 on Nuʻuanu Ave. I’ve worked for Maile Meyer for 8 years, beginning at Nā Mea Hawaiʻi and I then transitioned into the world of Native Books when she announced her intention to purchase a building in Chinatown Honolulu to open a bookstore and art gallery. Maile always encourages her staff to find an aspect of the business that interests us and to grow our capacities, to take workshops for different crafts offered in the makers’ space that neighbors Nā Mea Hawaiʻi.

For me, I felt a growing inclination toward book collecting when I became more involved in Native Books, learning the history of this place, the importance of the stories of this place, the places I am connected to, the places that the people I love are connected to. I think it was a hunger for a deeper knowledge and for truth that made me want to collect books. Especially since Native Books primarily deals in new books. Daily we get calls for out of print material: do you have this book by so-and-so, do you guys carry Tales from the Night Rainbow by Koko Willis, do you guys have a copy of Kumulipo by Rubellite Kawena Johnson, Native Planters in Old Hawaiʻi, the list would go on and on and I would comb the used book stores and the Friends of the Library sales and happen upon these books which I knew people were looking for! So obviously I would go oh what could be so special about this book, now I have to know... It was that curiosity that got me super hungry about finding the books that other people were looking for. Understanding why people are looking for them, what they mean, what they might represent for people.

Last year I had the opportunity to be one of the CABS’ Diverse Voices Fellows. I had an incredible experience with the other fellows, Francisco Hernandez (Leaves), Zakiya Collier, and Phillip Richardson (Solitary Confinement) as well as Michele Wan (Head to Tail Books) and Garrett Scott. I left CABS that year so much richer, in resources and in relationships. It was a very affirming experience and I appreciate the faculty of CABS and every bookseller I met and shared space with during that time.

What is your role at Native Books?

I manage the educational sales, which means talking to teachers and librarians, generating quotes for them so they can make the purchase order, ordering books, shipping orders. Getting them whatever they need the best we can because they are doing God’s work.

My other primary function is caring for our rare, used, and out of print books. Twice a year, in the Art & Letters gallery which we share our space with, we run an exhibition called Off the Wall where we get to showcase these books and sell them off of the gallery wall, hence the name. Native Books gets to take over the gallery and install some bookshelves to showcase our rare books. A worktable is set up in the middle of the space so I can also sit and price books and answer any questions and just talk story with anyone who is poking around and being curious.

What do you love about the book trade?

Books are a way to access knowledge, history, thought, different points in time that connect us to how we operate in the world now. Missionaries brought the first printing press to Hawaiʻi in 1820. During a time of great change, a huge shift in spirituality, the decimation of the native Hawaiian population from diseases which were knowingly introduced by foreigners, the importance of learning to read and write became very important to Hawaiians. In 1853, 75% of people in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi over the age of 16 were literate in Hawaiian, English, or a European language, and this increased to 80% by 1878. Works documenting Hawaiian history and culture were being published and printed in Hawaiian language newspapers, adapting from a culture whose transmission of knowledge was primarily oral to one which put this knowledge on paper allowed for these stories to be kept alive and accessible today. This forethought is the legacy of those people who understood that if this did not happen, the knowledge may disappear. 

Today this work continues to be important, and I love connecting people to the expanse of Hawaiian knowledge that exists so they understand the resilience of this work, and understand that the work continues. We live in a time of great change, and being able to connect to those who came before us, helps us now to grasp our own capacities of what we can do today. I love researching books, and making connections between books, so that I can then one day encounter that person, customer, friend, artist, activist, who is meant to have that copy. I love knowing that there is a large community of booksellers and book stewards who engage in this practice.

Describe a typical day for you:

I leave my house around 9am-ish. I live near a place called Zippy’s Vineyard which is an 8 minute walk to Native Books. I try to say good morning to as many people as I can on my way to work. On a good day I can get 3 good mornings back. Then I get into work and depending on the season, I have a lot of school orders to fill, so I spend a lot of time on the computer, and shipping books or arranging deliveries with my colleagues. I look forward to when schools on the west side of Oʻahu place large orders because then I like to tag along for the delivery and then we go jump in the ocean.

When the educational order season is slower, I try to spend more time plugging away with books, adding them into my database on airtable. Crack open some books, make a big mess, go to Pacific Liquor at Fort Street Mall across the street for musubi, come back and type type type, go back downstairs see what action get, answer the phone, talk about books, go back upstairs, sweep, put some books away, get other books, get excited about something. I’m kind of scatter-brain so by the end of the day, tasks I start are half-done and then tasks I started the day before hopefully get done.

Favorite rare book (or ephemera) that you’ve handled?

I handled a copy of Native Planters in Old Hawaiʻi, which is a Bishop Museum Bulletin about the plants and agricultural practices of Hawaiians. It was signed by Mary Kawena Pukui, one of the authors, who in her life left an incredible legacy of native Hawaiian scholarship. She is noted for her work in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi or the Hawaiian language, co-authoring the Hawaiian Dictionary with Samuel Elbert, as well as for her work with Queen Liliʻuokalani Children’s Center, collaborating with social workers to co-author the books Nānā I ke Kumu vol I and vol II. To hold this book and rest my gaze on her blue ink signature was so moving, I remember my heart pounding when I saw it.

When this Native Planters sold, it was on my day off but I happened to be in the building for a non-book-related meeting, and my colleague ran upstairs to fetch me so I could meet the person who was considering buying it. He is a farmer and scholar on Oʻahu and I offered him a better price, saw the book off, and shed a few tears... I ran into him and his partner again at a gathering during the 13th Festival of the Pacific Arts and Culture last month and he said she (the book) is safe and sound.

What do you personally collect?

My collecting in the beginning was informed by what other people were looking for at first. I was searching for the books people asked for, then through handling and exploring these books, all of a sudden I get it now. Then, I want my own copy. Mostly the works of 19th century Hawaiian scholars, Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau, Davida Malo, Kepelino. These are a few notable people who laid serious groundwork for recording ʻike kūpuna (ancestral knowledge) of their people. I also collect works by Malcom Nāea Chun, a Hawaiian historian who published biographies of a couple of the above mentioned scholars and works describing traditional ways of values of being Hawaiian, often citing the original writings of Malo and Kamakau from  primary source materials like Hawaiian language newspapers, and providing his own translations and interpretations of the ideas shared.

Mostly though, I collect any and all books and print materials that speak to the practice of ulana lauhala, or the weaving of lauhala, the leaves of the pandanus tree.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I’m a weaver with a community weaving program called Keanahala. We use a material called lauhala which comes from the plant called pūhala or hala, also known as Pandanus tectorius, which is a plant both endemic (here before people came) and a canoe plant (brought by humans). Lauhala was and is traditionally used in the Pacific to weave sails for the vessels which brought people to Hawaiʻi, as well as for weaving mats and baskets. Hala is also a metaphor for transformation and transition.

I also like to shoot hoops with my friends and I love eating food.

Thoughts on the present state and/or future of the rare book trade?

There is a ʻōlelo noʻeau, or Hawaiian proverb that comes to mind, “ ‘Aʻole pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi ”. Not all knowledge is housed in one place, or school of teaching. I know that the future of the trade lies in our abilities to have many different ways, different models of how we operate that we can flourish. I recall hearing this at CABS, “There are as many ways to sell a book as there are booksellers.” I believe that to see the spaces we wish for, the spaces we can all feel comfortable in and feel included and in community, we must create them. This starts with intentionalizing the spaces we create for ourselves and it looks as big as organizing your own gathering of booksellers and book collectors or as small as making someone feel welcome in your space, in your booth, in your open shop, in your website, whatever that may look like. The collegiality of the book trade is an incredible gift, to be able to weave a community of care through each of our relationships with each other.

Native Books operates as one alternative model. Maile believes in a sharing and gifting economy. One of the books that is published through one of our imprints is Kūʻē Petitions: A Mau Loa Aku Nō, which is a collection of 21,269 signatures collected in 1897, petitioning the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi by the United States of America. This petition, after successfully defeating the treaty of annexation in 1898, fell into obscurity until it was rediscovered in the 90’s by Hawaiian scholar Noenoe K. Silva at the National Archives in D.C. In the beginning of 2020, Native Books reprinted the petitions in full-color, including essays by Kānaka Maoli authors, and a location based index for people to look up their ancestors.

Our ability to create this access for people to witness the incredible effort of their ancestors is what in turn keeps Native Books in business. We want to make just enough to do things like this, to reprint and make sure publications like this are in community by donating significant portions of the print run, and to maintain our ability to keep the lights on in the space that functions as a refuge where people know they can find these kinds of materials and be in a space that is a Hawaiian place of business. Being able to be in relationship with each other and connect to history and to our cultures helps us to understand how to relate to the world, how to create the world that we want to live in where we fight for the things that matter and care for each other and the place we live in. How to heal ourselves. Books are one of many forms which allow us to connect to those things, so I am really grateful and I look forward to the future of the book trade when I think of those potentialities.

Any upcoming fairs or catalogs?

Native Books’ next Off the Wall rare, used, and out of print book sale will be in November, and run until the new year, beginning of January.