Grass Skirt
A grass skirt is a costume and garment made with layers of plant fibres such as grasses and leaves that is fastened at the waistline. Pacific Grass skirts were introduced to Hawaii by immigrants from the Gilbert Islands around the 1870s to 1880s although their origins are attributed to Samoa as well. According to DeSoto Brown, a historian at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, it is likely Hawaiian dancers began wearing them during their performances on the vaudeville circuit of the United States mainland. Traditional Hawaiian skirts were often made with fresh ti leaves, which were not available in the United States. By the turn of the century, Hawaiian dancers in both Hawaii and the US were wearing grass skirts. Some Hawaiian-style hula dancers still wear them. The traditional costume of Hawaiian '' hula kahiko'' includes kapa cloth skirts and men in malo (loincloth) however, during the 1880s ''hula ‘auana'' was developed from western influences. It is during this period that the gra ...
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Tales Of The South Pacific
''Tales of the South Pacific'' is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of sequentially related short stories by James A. Michener about the Pacific campaign in World War II. The stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy at the Espiritu Santo Naval Base on the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Islands (now known as Vanuatu). Written in 1946 and published in 1947, the book was loosely adapted in 1949 as the Broadway musical ''South Pacific'', which itself formed the basis of two films dating from 1958 and 2001. Book The stories take place in the environs of the Coral Sea and the Solomon Islands. Michener as narrator gives a first-person voice to several of the stories as an unnamed "Commander", performing duties similar to those that he himself performed during World War II. The stories are interconnected by recurring characters and several loose plot lines. One plot line in particular is t ...