Inglis, Kerri A. (Author)
University of Hawai'i Press
Physical Details: xvii + 268 pp.; maps; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English
Ma`i Lepera attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawai`i's history. It takes an unprecedented look at the Hansen's disease outbreak (1865--1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of patients, ninety percent of whom were Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Using traditional and nontraditional sources, published and unpublished, it tells the story of a disease, a society's reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawai`i and its people. Over a span of thirty-four years more than five thousand people were sent to a leprosy settlement on the remote peninsula in north Moloka`i traditionally known as Makanalua. Their story has seldom been told despite the hundreds of letters they wrote to families, friends, and the Board of Health, as well as to Hawaiian-language newspapers, detailing their concerns at the settlement as they struggled to retain their humanity in the face of ma`i lepera. Many remained politically active and, at times, defiant, resisting authority and challenging policies. As much as they suffered, the K naka Maoli of Makanalua established new bonds and cared for one another in ways that have been largely overlooked in popular histories describing leprosy in Hawai`i. Although Ma`i Lepera is primarily a social history of disease and medicine, it offers compelling evidence of how leprosy and its treatment altered Hawaiian perceptions and identities. It changed how K naka Maoli viewed themselves: By the end of the nineteenth century, the diseased had become a cultural other to the healthy Hawaiian. Moreover, it reinforced colonial ideology and furthered the use of both biomedical practices and disease as tools of colonization.
...MoreReview Flexner, James L. (2014) Review of "Ma'i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 386-387).
Review Fox, Ani (2014) Review of "Ma'i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i". Bulletin of the Pacific Circle (pp. 16-17).
Review Seng, Loh Kah (2014) Review of "Ma'i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i". Social History of Medicine (pp. 400-402).
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