"Haole" in Hawaiian Pidgin means "White" or "Caucasian"; it can be
used descriptively or derisively, but we use it as a term of endearment
for our beloved husbands. Sure there are ups and downs in every marriage
but once your parents can accept that your husband is not the "Shiroi
Akuma" or "Quai Lo," everything else is just gravy.
The Haole Hubby Club (www.haolehubbyclub.com) was formed as a place
to share stories addressing the challenges that occur when two cultures
collide. Sometimes hilarious and yet sometimes tense or awkward, the
underlying theme is love prevails and laughter always follows. The Haole
Hubby Club aims to cross the racial divide and celebrate mixed
marriages.
Growing up in Hawaii, I usually dated local Japanese boys with the
occasional Filipino or Haole sprinkled in between. My mother wouldn’t
let me go to a mainland college because she was convinced I’d marry a
"Haole and never come back." Sorry mom, it happened anyway. I attended
the University of Hawaii but a year after graduation I moved to San
Francisco in pursuit of a career.
My mother, still resisting the idea that I was an adult, followed me
to San Francisco. With the help of my aunt (coincidentally, a
trendsetting member of the Haole Hubby Club), they found a suitable
apartment for me to live in while I started my new job across the bay in
Oakland.
The day I moved in, Harvey, the building superintendent, stopped me
in the lobby to introduce me to Marc, who was also moving in that day.
We shook hands, said "hi" and went back to moving our things in. It
wasn’t until a few months later when we met in the lobby again that we
became friends and then finally, in 1999, after three years of dating
and living one floor apart from each other, we got married.
A year later my cousin, Mercedes, also married a Haole. Another
cousin, Diana, had already been married to a Haole for a few years. It
was just for fun when we started referring to ourselves as the Haole
Hubby Club because we could laugh and relate to each other with stories
about having a White husband.
As we found more and more women we knew that were "in the club," the
Web site was started to post photos and stories and it snowballed from
there. Since its inception in 2003, the club has expanded to the Haole
Honey Club for Asian men married to Caucasian women. The offspring of
these unions also have their place in the Hapa Kids Club. While we’re
not promoting interracial marriages, we would like to share some of the
benefits of having a Haole Hubby ...
