Moloka'i Book

Molokaʻi (Moloka'i #1) by Alan Brennert (Author), Anne Noelani Miyamoto (Narrator)

More than two years after I read Daughter of Moloka'i, I have been able to read Moloka'i, the book that preceded Daughter of Moloka'i. Both stories are beautiful and I wish I'd read them closer together just to have made the stories one long experience. This book relates the life of Rachel Kalama, a little girl who is diagnosed with leprosy and is banished to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i.

Around 1866, those with leprosy were shipped to Kalaupapa and dumped onto the shore with nothing, no shelter and very little to help them survive. But over the decades, the people who live there and those who work to help these people, build settlements to make life better for the sufferers and eventually to work towards a cure for the disease. When seven year old Rachel is diagnosed with leprosy, people like her were considered criminals for harboring the disease and banishment was their fate. Rachel is whisked away from her family to a medical center where she was tested in the most humiliating ways and then later, shipped to the island to live the rest of her life in the leper colony. 

Rachel arrives at Kalaupapa in the year of 1893 and unlike the first lepers who were dumped on the island to die, Rachel arrives to find a thriving community, ready to welcome all newcomers. This story is full of heartbreak, with the suffering of the people from ravished bodies but also the heartbreak of never seeing or hearing from their families again. The stigma of leprosy was such that many families completely removed the leper from their lives, pretending they didn't exist anymore, never acknowledging them by letter. The isolation of the island, added to the isolation from former friends and family, crushed many of the inhabitants of the island. 

But, despite many rules and regulations that seemed much too rigid and dogmatic, life on the island did provide it's own sense of family and community. Over the length of the story, there are so many tears, as Rachel loses everyone. But Rachel's father never forgets her, never stops being there for her. And she makes lifelong friends on the island, makes a life that is as full as any other life. For being a story about people who are diagnosed with leprosy and sent off in exile, this is a story of sacrifice and suffering but also a story of perseverance with dignity, friendship, and love. In many ways, Rachel and those with her, are able to appreciate what life for it's fragileness, in ways that fully healthy people may not be able to appreciate. 

Published February 10th 2010