John Tayman, has marvelously succeeded in this sweeping history of the exiles of Molokai. It bears tragic witness to the banishment of the victims of Hansen's disease to a hostile isolated island beginning in 1866 with twelve men and women and one stowaway child and continuing for over a century. Along the way we are confronted with legislative debates such as, "Is it a crime to be afflicted with leprosy?" and although the necessary answer is no, it is a disease, in actual fact these people were treated as criminals. They were rounded up and forcibly exiled. The pages are littered with historical figures and events revealed in both their humanity and their inhumanity. We find Robert Louis Stephenson, Jack London, Mark Twain, and even more recently a skittish John Wayne . We witness Pearl Harbor, and the establishment of Hawaii as the the fiftieth state.
While we do find the posthumous saints such as Father Damien Joseph De Veuster who by one account dug over 1300 graves, and we also find much cruelty. The account of the Dying Den, bears witness to a man being dumped from a wheelbarrow to the threshold of this hell in order to, "spare the sensibilities of the other hospital inmates."
Probably the most succinct description of the history of this disease, "leprosy itself [is] a rich source of ironies, populated ... "with rogues and vagabonds, saints, and martyrs.""
Although this is not a casual read it is worth the time, this lesson must be re-learned and not repeated.
Mary Jones
aka tobiejonzarelli
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1 comment:
OMG! I would lov eto read this book! Thanks for the review.
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