My Big Fat Tongan Wedding
Think Americans are turning the clock back on civil rights? Then you need to look at what’s happening in our families
My nephew Lopeti “Crunkie” Havealeta didn’t know the word “fat” has a different shading in the United States than it does in his native Tonga. So when he told another young man, a stout American kid, “Hey, you’re a big guy. You’re really fat,” he thought the compliment would be appreciated.
It definitely was not. Cultures clashed. Hemispheres collided. And the broad-shouldered American kid was embarrassed and offended.
“Crunkie” recounted this story to me while I drove a U-Haul truck rattling with wedding supplies north from Provo, Utah, up Interstate 15 to a city called American Fork.
He sounded almost apologetic. “I didn’t know that ‘fat’ had a different meaning here.”
To be “fat” in Tonga is a compliment, he explained. “It means you’re healthy.”
In an island nation where nearly a quarter of the population falls below the poverty line, it is a good thing to have ample meat on your bones, he explained. It means you’re eating well. It means life has been good to you.
Crunkie is my nephew by marriage. He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him. He is powerfully built. A natural athlete who works among the ground crew at Salt Lake City International Airport lifting heavy things to support his family as he works toward a management degree at LDS Business College.
We were talking in the cab of that UHaul truck because in 2015 he became the first Tongan to marry into my family. Our job at the moment was to take supplies to a banquet hall to set up for the second Tongan to marry into the family. That young man’s name is Russell Uasilaa. He would be marrying my niece Lizzy Leavitt.
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Getting to Utah for this Tongan wedding proved a challenge. I had cleared the entire morning to finish an editorial and would be flying out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport that afternoon.
That’s when word arrived that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was in Phoenix and wanted to meet with The Arizona Republic Editorial Board, not tomorrow, not next week, but now. This morning.
Well, there wasn’t time. It didn’t matter.
History has its privileges and as a young man it so happened that Jesse Louis Jackson caught one of the great waves in world history when he and a small group of black men and women led the American Civil Rights movement to greater social acceptance of people of color. Long after most newsmakers of our age are forgotten, these men and women will be remembered for changing the world.
That still didn’t change the fact that I had a plane to catch — a wedding to attend. So I was quite antsy when Rev. Jackson arrived at our conference table and began setting it with arguments for the coming midterm elections.
I listened dutifully to all that, but it was something else that made me sit
For decades the family portraits on our side have been almost exclusively white, but that is changed for good. Like a lot of America, our family is forever multicultural.