January is Kalaupapa Month

Published twice a year since 1989 by the University of Hawaiʻi Press, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing has two issues of special interest to readers this month, which has been designated Kalaupapa Month by the Hawaiʻi state government and celebrates two important figures. Father Damien, the Belgian priest who cared for victims of leprosy at Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi, was born on the 3rd, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the 15th.

Almost Heaven: On the Human and Divine (winter 2011) presents Aldyth Morris’s play Damien in its entirety, plus a set of images reproduced from glass-plate negatives made at Kalaupapa in the early twentieth century. The images are from the collection of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts United States Province. Morris was a Hawaiʻi playwright who received the Hawaiʻi Award for Literature in 1978 and worked for many years at UH Press.

Tyranny Lessons: International Prose, Poetry, and Performance (summer 2020) features photographs from the 1960s by Danny Lyon from his book Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Lyon was the first photographer of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and was jailed alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Working next to activists such as Julian Bond and Howard Zinn, he captured sit-ins, church bombings, speeches by John Lewis and other leaders, and the arrest and jailing of protestors.

Members of the UH community can view these works for free at Project Muse.

Links:
• Star-Advertiser article on Kalaupapa Month https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/01/07/hawaii-news/
in-january-kalaupapa-month-hawaiians-reclaim-loved-ones/
• Mānoa website https://manoa.hawaii.edu/manoajournal/
• Almost Heaven https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/25083
• Tyranny Lessons https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42693