Essay/Term paper: Wild meat and the bully burgers

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Book Reports

In the

beginning, Lovey and her best friend, Jerry, are watching the

Shirley Temple movie before they go to church. They never

get to see the end because they have to go and leave. They

make up the endings and cry in the middle of the pastor's

sermon. On Lovey's birthday, Jerry would make her a gift

certificate from the toy store for $500. Lovey is very

embarrassed to be speaking pidgin English. She doesn't tell

anyone, not even Jerry, how she is ashamed of how she

talks, looks, or even where she lives. Lovey secretly wants

to be haole, but she knows that she can't. Everyone in her

class has a very hard time speaking proper English, and the

teacher yells at them for not being able too. Lovey has a

hard time in math class and gets teased for being Japanese.

It's as if the rest of the students expect her to be smart just

because she is Japanese. Lovey is supposed to write her

own obituary for her English class. It gets her thinking about

death, and consequently she thinks about it all the time.

Lovey dreams and fantasizes about being haole. She thinks

up of the perfect house with all the trimmings. She wants to

marry a haole so she can have a haole last name. Lovey

makes haole friends so that she can sleep over their houses

and eat their food. Her father says that she is crazy for

wanting to be friends with haoles, and that she should stop.

Lovey and her family do many things together. They sit on

the back porch picking fleas off of their dogs, squeezes

blackheads off of her mothers back, count all white cows,

sing war songs, and pick macadamia nuts for extra money.

A normal Sunday afternoon would be their Mother smoking

Parliaments on the porch of their house, grumbling about

white hairs, and Lovey picking fleas off of their dogs. Lovey

and her sister, Calhoon, goes to their Aunt Helen's on

Saturdays while their mother sews leis or cashiers at the Lei

Stand for extra money. They watch the old crazy ladies

stand behind the fence, muttering to themselves. Lovey

wants to become pregnant just like her neighbor Katy is.

She secretly dresses up and acts like she is pregnant. Her

mother tells her that it is hard because there is a lot of pain

that comes with labor. Lovey's mother gives her an at home

perm. It's called a Toni Perm, and it gets messed up bad.

Lovey comes out with an Afro, and Calhoon teases her

about it and calls her an Oompah Loompah. Lovey is given

rabbits to breed and take care off. She loves them very

much, but one day the cages are torn open by wild dogs that

kill all the rabbits. To make Lovey feel better, her father

plays home movies, and Calhoon threatens to kill the dogs

with their fathers gun. Calhoon never lies. She tells Lovey

one day, while they are out hunting, not to shoot the

Japanese blue pheasant or it will haunt her. Calhoon and her

Father both have the ghost eye. They can see ghosts in their

house and are drawn to them. Since Lovey killed the bird,

she now is awakened by a ghost that bothers her in the

middle of the night. Lovey's father bought a cow to raise so

that they could kill it, and eat it. Calhoon and Lovey get to

attached to it and name it Bully. One day, the kitchen smells

of wild meat. Their father is cooking hamburgers. After the

first bite, none of them can finish eating it. They realize that it

is a Bully burger. Pages 85-116 Everyone at school tease

Lovey and Jerry for being friends. No one understands what

they are to each other. They do have many things in

common and are the best of friends. Lovey and Jerry play

Barbie together, and Jerry steals Barbie clothes from his rich

cousin, Ingrid. Jerry's brother, Larry, goes into Lovey's

room one day, and marks up the Barbie and cuts her hair.

Lovey is devastated and they swear to get even. Halloween

comes, and they go trick-or-treating at the rich peoples

houses on Reed's Island. They give out real chocolate, and

lots of candy. Jerry finds a bag full of marijuana in Larry's

shoe box under his bed. He brings it over to Lovey's and

they decide to roll it and sell it so that they can get money to

buy more Barbies that Larry had messed up. After they had

sold all the dope, the go over to Wigwam to buy all the

Barbie stuff. They run home and stash it in the back of

Lovey's closet. The next time that they go over to Jerry's

house, Larry is there with his friends and they want to know

where their dope is. Larry and his friends beat Jerry and

Lovey up for taking it. They laugh at how much they bleed,

and blame it on each other. Pages 118-180 For the first

time, Lovey has gotten her period. She is very scared that

everyone can tell that she has it. She doesn't want anyone to

know, because she will be teased at school. Lovey's teacher

French-braids her hair everyday. She loves her teacher very

much. She spends her school days with her, getting her

lunch, taking role, and then she even starts to sleep over her

house, and do the chores. Jerry and Lovey go there almost

everyday, helping out around the house. One night, the

teacher tells them about God. How in the Kingdom Hall of

Jehovah's Witnesses says only 44,000 can live on earth after

God destroys the planet. She wants them to be one of the

44,000 that live. One night they hear the teacher laughing

hysterically with a green glow coming from her room. They

get real scared and run home in the middle of the night.

Lovey's mother gets mad because now they are both scared

of everything. She puts Lovey on a plane to Molokai to live

with her grandmother for a while so that she can forget what

has happened. Grandmother does her best to pass the time

for Lovey, but she doesn't know that Lovey is still scared of

her teacher. She doesn't sleep until the sun comes up the

next day, that she hears little men laughing. Lovey tells

Grandmother one day, and they go to the church to talk to

the reverend. They pray for her. Lovey and her father have a

new moneymaking idea, to pluck feathers off of dead

peacocks and to sell them to the feather lei makers. They go

on long drives together, and her father tells her stories of

when he was young. She enjoys these times very much

because he would have never told anyone these stories

unless they were in such circumstances as that. He talks

about his house back in Haupu and how he misses it. He

would like to go back there with Lovey and climb the

mountain. Pages 183-276 The town has a carnival, and

Lovey and Jerry go together. They each don't have very

much money, but win a Coke bottle. They see Larry and his

girlfriend, Crystal, in the games area, and ask her if they

could carry around some of their stuffed animals. She says

"yes' and they get a big pink bear, and a snake that Lovey

wraps around her neck. When they see girls from their

school, they shake up the Coke bottle and dump it on them

from the top of the Ferris wheel. Lovey doesn't understand

why Jerry wants to be friends with Lori, a Japanese girl that

hates her. She is a popular snob with no respect for anyone.

He doesn't know, and just shrugs. Lovey and Calhoon take

sewing classes in the bottom of the Singer basement. When

Lovey makes clothes and wears it the next day, Gina makes

fun of it. Lovey wants to give up, but her father tells her that

you can't win if you quit. So, she tries again, and Calhoon

and Lovey work very hard to make a pair of patchwork

denim hip-hugger bell-bottoms for her. It looked like real

store- bought ones, and Gina could not say a thing about it.

Lovey feels real proud. At the end of the year, they have a

grad dance that Jerry and Lovey go to. They both have been

trying their hardest to become popular. Jerry keeps insisting

that Jenks likes her, even though he doesn't show it when

they are at school. He is real nice to both of them on the

weekends when they are at the beach, but because he is

popular, he doesn't even give them a nod at school. When

the dance comes, Lovey waits in anticipation for Jenks to

ask her to dance. She got all dressed up, but he never does.

Until the last slow dance of the night. They dance together

and Lovey is happy. Lovey's father goes on a three day

hunting trip with his friends. They go out and hunt goats near

the lava flow. When he comes back he has blown out his

eyes. He can't see, and he's scared. Father is still mad at

Lovey for burning Calhoon when they were at the

incinerator. He is so depressed and sad that Lovey can think

of only one thing to do. She borrows some money from

Katy, and buys a plane ticket to Kauai. She gets a cab there

and goes to Kipu. She fills a ziplock bag with dirt, and then

goes back to the Big Island. She fills another ziplock bag

with dirt from their backyard. Lovey's mother is really mad

at her. No one knew where she went, and they were all

worried about her. They take her back to her father's

hospital room to explain herself. She tells her father where

she was, what she has done, and why. He is so happy that

they all forget that they were worried about her. The dirt is

so that when he dies, he will be buried in dirt from two

places. His ! home in Kipu, and his home in Hawaii. When

he is buried like that, he will know that he is finally home and

at peace. The Main Characters Lovey Nariyoshi- A young

girl living in Hawaii. She has a sister named Calhoon, and a

best friend named Jerry. She is an outcast at her school, and

is teased constantly. Lovey wants to be someone she isn't.

She always fantasizes about being haole or popular. Jerome

(Jerry)- Lovey's best friend, they spend all their time

together. The one person that keeps Lovey happy and

together. He has a brother names Larry that always picks on

them and hurts them physically. Jerry and Lovey are the best

of friends, they love each other to death. Hubert (Inky)

Nariyoshi- Lovey's father. He is her inspiration, and what

she tries to imitate. She always tries to please him, and be

just like him. Hubert loses his eyesight and becomes

depressed. Lovey remembers him telling her that he wants to

be buried in dirt from his house in Kipu and his house in

Hawaii. She gets him happy by going to Kauai and getting

the dirt as he wanted. He loves her very much. Throughout

this whole book, Lovey is wishing that she is haole. She

occupies her time by thinking what her life would be like if

she was white. I think the author is trying to tell us that we

should accept our life just as it is. To strive to make it better,

but also, not to have unrealistic dreams. In the end of this

book, I think Lovey finally gets the message from her father

to stop trying to be someone your not, and to just be

yourself. That is what this whole book is about. To be who

you are, not someone that your not.