A review by zhelana
Local: A Memoir by Jessica Machado

3.0

This book was advertised as being about identifying as a local in Hawaii, and claims it has a lot of information about Hawaiian culture and history in it. Neither of these things were true. For one thing, Jessica doesn't even end up going back to Hawaii, so it's really just like... she grew up there and left, and most of the story does not take place there. And while there are short sections of each chapter relating her life to the history of Hawaii (kind of) it doesn't feel integral to her, and feels sort of forced. The only typically Hawaiian thing about her story is being called "haole" in school one day. Overall this read like an incredibly typical and rather boring coming of age story in which the author drinks too much, screws too many random boys, gets a DUI, and has fights with her parents. It literally could have taken place anywhere, and the key moments don't even take place in Hawaii, but rather LA. I was really looking forward to this book, but in the end, it just wasn't very good.