Summary

In “Hotel Molokai,” the narrator flew to Kaunakakai Molokai with her grandmother. The flight was turbulent and the narrator was afraid. She missed her mother. The old man next to her knew she was going to see Kaule o Nānāhoa and asked if she knew what phallic meant. The rock was shaped like a phallus and meant to make barren women fertile. When the narrator asked Grams about it, she insisted they did not use that language to talk about Kaule o Nānāhoa.

The narrator was alarmed by the filth of Hotel Molokai. However, she did not have time to focus on it as Grams’s sister Judy, “and her husband, Wally, and their youngest son Kalahiki” were on their way (122). Although they were family, the narrator wanted “to call [her] mother” (122).

The narrator had recently begun exploring her...