What airline carriers do you recommend for flights leaving Oahu heading to back to RI ? It seems like all the flights I'm finding are for overnight. Is this typically ?

It is very typical, but don't let that scare you. Last May, we took Delta back from Oahu on a red-eye. We were very hesitant, but we would now do it again. We fell asleep about an hour into our flight (as did almost everyone else) and we woke up right as we were landing! It was great.
I think you would find it's ok to take the red-eye flights.

Some people break up the long trip by doing two flights with an overnight on the west coast U.S.

Yeah, unfortunately you will be flying overnight at some point As a fellow New Englander, I can sympathize.

Either you'll leave Hawaii late in the day and fly overnight to your connecting city OR you'll leave Hawaii during the day and then have to wait for a red-eye from the connecting city to your home city. I tried the overnighting in California once, but I would never do that again. IMO, it was a waste of time, a lot of aggravation (luggage pickup, transportation, check-in, security, etc.), and at that point, our vacation was over and we just wanted to get home.

Enjoy the trip! Hawaii's a magical place......

All the flights HNL to anywhere on the East Coast are overnight, not just the ones to New England.

Yeah, so???

Seemed like the flights to the west coast were, as well. We were flying ATA, and it seemed like everything HNL-SFO was lv 9P, arr 6A.

The only advantage was that after a full day in Honolulu, we went to sleep almost immediately after takeoff. I dunno whether they even had beverage service, let alone a movie....

Took a couple of days in San Francisco to recover, but there are worse places to do an R&R!