My grandmother was born in Hawaii. Her father arrived in 1893, her mother arrived in 1897. She was born at the end of WWI while Hawaii was a territory of the United States and grew up on the plantations of Ahualoa on the Big Island. As a little girl she worked on the plantation alongside her brothers and sisters and went to school. She was a good student and was eventually sent to Oahu to continue her high school education and live with her brother. Then her mother got sick and she suspended her education and returned to the plantation to help nurse her until she died.

My grandmother soon had an arranged marriage with my grandfather, a marriage that would produce four children and seven grand-children. During the course of that life, my grandmother finished her high-school education and went on to college, then graduate school and received her doctorate at Columbia University, Teacher’s College and committed the rest of her life to teaching and writing. She believed in the American Dream. My grandmother was a plantation girl from immigrant parents who worked hard, persevered and made a successful life for herself and her family. She grew up during the depression and believed in American values, the values of FDR and Kennedy. These were the values of a United States that worked for international peace, for the people. This is what she believed.

Her international-mindedness could have come from living in International House while at Columbia. She was there before the United Nations was built in NYC, and there is a photo of her with Ralph Bunche, a US delegate to the UN, appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a prinicpal to the ideals of African independence in the l950s.

Michelle Obama’s speech at the opening of the DNC in Denver, has not only reenergized the belief of the Horatio Alger version of the American Dream. Her speech expands the story beyond the simple rags to riches story. She describes her return back to the community and chooses not simply ideas of personal financial success, but of ideals that embrace community development. Her story idealizes personal honor, duty, dignity, respect, affirmation of identity and social justice.

My father loved the Horatio Alger story, and he tried to instill those values in me. I, myself didn’t embrace it so wholeheartedly, but now, this Michelle Obama version, has me thinking of the work my grandparents did, the work they accomplished in Hawaii.

My grandmother would have wept upon hearing this speech, and recognizing that she might very well have been up there behind the podium is all that it takes for me to reconfirm that the American Dream is still alive. My grandmother might have been the presumptive first lady from a working class family in Chicago’s south side, asian rather than black. Neither Michelle nor my grandmother came from the middle-class Huxtables from Brooklyn as we’ve heard compared, rather more like the Evans from Good Times, the working class family from the south-side of Chicago, or as in my grandmother’s case, an immigrant family from the plantations of Ahualoa. This realization of the American Dream is what my grandmother believed in, and that is what Michelle Obama delivered, an American Dream built on a vision of principles.

Moreover, there is currently a spotlight shining on Hawaii, a place my grandmother believed in, a place where many times in her life, as a published author and world-traveler, she had said, “Of all the places I have been to and seen, Hawaii is the best place of all.” This spotlight shines from the Olympics, the Little League World Champions from Waipio, and from Barack Obama. This spotlight highlights the diversity that is Hawaii. This story is of the locals who live and work here, whose history and struggles have come to define this place. Hawaii is a place to be proud of because of its histories and diversity.

From an ethnic perpective, when Hawaii was a territory, the governor and the judges were appointed by the president, and with the exception of Samuel Wilder King, who was of native Hawaiian descent, all the territorial governors and judges were white. However, since Hawaii became a state in 1959, these were/are some of the senators and congressmen from Hawaii: Hiram Fong, of Chinese descent; Oren Long, a previous territorial governor who was white and from Kansas; Sparky Matsunaga of Japanese ancestry; Tom Gill who was white and from Hawaii; Patsy Mink who was a woman of Japanese ancestry; Daniel Akaka, Hawaiian/Chinese; Neil Abercrombie, white, from upstate New York; and of course we can’t forget the senior senator Dan Inouye, also of Japanese descent, who had lost his arm during WWII. The state of Hawaii’s first governors were William Quinn, an appointed territorial governor who was white and from Missouri, John Burns who was white and grew up in Kalihi, Hawaii’s version of the south side of Chicago; George Ariyoshi who was of Japanese ancestry; John Waihe’e who is native Hawaiian; and Benjamin Cayetano, of Filipino descent. Our current governor Linda Lingle is Jewish– which in Hawaii is certainly a minority– and although many speculate upon her sexual orientation, I believe that it would represent the diversity that is Hawaii so much more if the rumor were actually true.

And now Obama! Another hapa from Hawaii–” half-popolo/half-haole” as my grandmother would say using the local vernacular that would describe herself as “oriental” over “asian.” Obama, like Hawaii embodies this American Dream Michelle spoke about. Watching her behind that podium tonight, I could feel the gravity of her words drain the cynic from my pores. When at one time I was convinced that Detroit was the American city of the future, I see that now Hawaii could play that role.