Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i

by Sara Kehaulani Goo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

After her family’s home in Maui is threatened, journalist Sara Kehaulani Goo painstakingly investigates the struggles of land ownership in Hawaii and the locals who are being displaced after generations on the island.

Set in one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, Kuleana is the story of an award-winning journalist’s effort to hold on to her family’s ancestral Hawaiian lands—and find herself along the way.

“A powerful story of land, belonging, loss, and survival that challenges us all to think about what we are responsible for.” —Rebecca Nagle, bestselling author of By the Fire We Carry

From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past.

When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire. When Sara returns to Maui from the mainland, she reconnects with her great-uncle Take and uncovers the story of how much land her family has already lost over generations, centuries-old artifacts from the temple, and the insidious displacement of Native Hawaiians by systemic forces.

Part journalistic offering and part memoir, Kuleana interrogates deeper questions of identity, legacy, and what we owe to those who come before and after us. Sara’s breathtaking story of unexpected homecomings, familial hardship, and fierce devotion to ancestry creates a refreshingly new narrative about Hawai‘i, its native people, and their struggle to hold on to their land and culture today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250333445
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Sara Kehaulani Goo is a journalist and senior news executive who has led several news organizations including Axios, NPR and The Washington Post. She is the former editor-in-chief at Axios, where she launched the company’s editorial expansion into national and local newsletters, podcasts and live journalism. Before Axios, she led online audience growth as a managing editor at NPR, overseeing the newsroom's digital news operation. Goo also served as news director at The Washington Post, where she also served as a business editor and reporter. Originally from Dana Point, California, she graduated from the University of Minnesota's journalism school. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

2025-03-08
A quest for justice in a changing Hawai‘i.

It may well surprise readers to learn, as journalist Goo did, that “there are now more people of Native Hawaiian descent—­53 percent of the 680,000—living outside of Hawai‘i than in Hawai‘i.” The reason, Goo writes, is simple: Most native Hawaiians don’t earn enough money to live in a place where the average home price is more than $1 million ($1.3 million on Maui). Money propels Goo’s narrative, which begins when her alarmed father announces that the state is drastically raising taxes on land held in the family trust after having been granted to an ancestor by the last king of Hawai‘i. Arriving at an equitable solution to this bureaucratic problem is just one thread of Goo’s narrative, whose larger story is really one of homecoming: Born and raised in California, an East Coast resident for decades, Goo must learn or relearn key points of the people’s traditional lifeways. The title of the book speaks to one such point, one’s obligation to both place and culture, less a burden, she explains, than a privilege: “For example, certain people had kuleana for growing taro or crops in a certain part of the island, or for taking care of a fishpond or teaching hula.” She explores many other concepts as she travels in the company of relatives, who take her, in one instance, to a heiau, or temple, whose purpose is lost to time; says her uncle, “Some people say dey did these tings there like human sacrifice and dat stuff, but we don’t know.” What is clear is that humans are sacrificed, at least metaphorically, for profit in a Hawai‘i made for wealthy outsiders; as Goo laments in closing, “Our culture won’t remain unless each generation—grandparent to parent to child to grandchild—­keeps it burning.”

A well-crafted work combining memoir, ethnography, history, and sharp-edged journalism.

Kirkus Reviews

"[A] stirring debut memoir.... Goo’s heartrending saga serves as an urgent reminder that Indigenous culture is alive and braided with modern life, and that all Americans have a role in its survival."
—Publishers Weekly

"A well-crafted work combining memoir, ethnography, history, and sharp-edged journalism."
—Kirkus

"Goo’s endearing narrative highlights the loving links in her multi-generational, multi-ethnic ʻohana as they come together to face a series of challenges."
—Honolulu Civil Beat

“A powerful story of land, belonging, loss, and survival that challenges us all to think about what we are responsible for. Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of land in Hawaii—and for that matter, this land we now call the United States.”
—Rebecca Nagle, bestselling author of By the Fire We Carry

“In her riveting memoir, Kuleana, journalist Sara Kehaulani Goo tells us more about the difficult past of one of the most beautiful places on earth than any history book can conjure. In it, a Native Hawaiian family struggles to reclaim the ancestral lands that colonization, tourism, and rampant development threaten to overrun. A veteran reporter, Sara plumbs every aspect of this story, spooling an engrossing narrative that informs as much as it engages. It is at once a chilling and inspirational tale.”
—Marie Arana, author of American Chica and LatinoLand

“A sui generis book, Sara Kehaulani Goo’s Kuleana deftly blends memoir and reportage into a revelatory and refreshing exploration of connections—to one's heritage, to one's family, and to one's home.”
—Jose Antonio Vargas, author of Dear America

“Sara Kehaulani Goo reminds us that no matter how far we Hawaiians stray away from our homeland our ancestors will continue to reach out to us and teach us forever. All we have to do is listen.”
—Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa, author of Nā Wāhine Kapu and Native Land and Foreign Desires

"As an Asian American author, it's important that we write our own histories and tell our own stories that show how different we are—that we are not a monolith. Sara's story is a uniquely AAPI one—from Hawai'i where the Asian American experience is different from the U.S. Mainland experience. I love that she brings that story into the American narrative—to be seen and to be known."
—Curtis Chin, author of Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

"By telling the story of her own family, Sara shines light on the many who experience the similar injustice of being displaced from their land, and the wound it inflicts deep into the essence of one's personal history, culture and, therefore, identity. Sara shares her story with courage, aloha and gratitude which brings the reader closer to the heart of this experience and the pull of kuleana. Kuleana is more than a story, it's what will help navigate the healing for all native people, not just in Hawai’i but around the world.”
—Nainoa Thompson, Pwo Navigator and CEO of Polynesian Voyaging Society

From the Publisher