Using My Bones to Make Your Bread

Graduation date: 2016Access permanently restricted to the OSU Community at author's request.The aim of this thesis is to curate experimental poetry in an attempt to investigate the complexity and constructs of ethnicity and identity as a fourth generation Japanese-American born and raised in Hawaii. The project draws from Native Hawaiian folktales and original contemporary Hawaiian poetry to emphasize the common threads of Humanism and, often times, the tragic consequences resulting from systemic failures regarding affluence, agency, and entitlement. The thesis utilized a variety of poetic forms such as conceptual poetry to demonstrate the confines from ethnic identity; erasure poetry to represent the absence of multiple perspectives; and elegies that thematically unify the bereavement of dispossession and complacency of a void. While the arrangement delves into the complexities of identity and ethnic diversity, it does not assume authority to propose a simple resolution; instead, through its self-indictment, it provides sensitive topics about identity that should propel self- acumen in future conversations