Magic, Myths, and Me

I wanted to share a small update on Once Upon a Moʻolelo: A Collection of Kaʻao, a project that has been growing slowly and intentionally over time. This work has never been about rushing, it’s been about listening, revisiting, and letting each story unfold the way it needs to.

At the moment, three stories are published and available, each reimagining a familiar fairy tale through a Hawaiian cultural lens. They are each grounded in ʻāina, ʻike kūpuna, and lived experience rather than outside expectations.

The published stories include:

• Hinahea and the Noni, a story about growth, restraint, and ʻike that questions isolation as protection. (Rapunzel)
• Kainalu & Keʻalohi, which explores hunger, scarcity, and survival through sibling bonds and ancestral responsibility. (Hansel & Gretel)
• Ka Mōʻī o Maui: Leimomi and the Lost Future, my most recently published work, is a Hawaiian retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Instead of a yellow brick road, the journey moves through fractured futures, stolen ʻāina, and companions who have each lost something essential—mana, trust, love, or voice. When Leimomi is swept from her home on Maui into a future that should not exist, her path becomes less about escape and more about responsibility, and what it means to return home carrying knowledge of what could be lost.

Alongside these published works, I’m currently deep in revision on Mahina Lepo, which I’m developing as part of my senior capstone project. This story re-envisions Cinderella through hula, labor, gendered expectation, and community belonging. While it isn’t available just yet, it remains a foundational piece of the collection and one I’m taking particular care with.

I’m also developing a new story that steps outside direct fairy-tale adaptation and into kaʻao of its own. This upcoming work explores the story of the first cat of Hawaiʻi, Pōpoki. Born with nine lives, his final two are spent alongside his best human friend, Liko. It’s a deeper story about companionship, mortality, time, and what it means to choose where you belong. Pōpoki is still very much in the works.

Each of these stories stands on its own, but together they form a larger conversation about what happens when familiar narratives are rooted in place instead of empire—when ʻike is relational, embodied, and earned.

As the project stands now, I’m balancing revision, continuity, and world-building, making sure each story speaks to the others without flattening their differences. This isn’t a fast process, but it’s a careful one. These stories matter to me not just as adaptations, but as proof that Hawaiian storytelling is not supplemental to fairy tales, but fully capable of reshaping them.

There are more stories in the works, more layers, and eventually the full collection brought together the way it’s always been meant to be read. For now, I’m grateful to share where I am in this journey, and even more grateful to everyone walking alongside it.

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