We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
No Footprints in the Sand - A Memoir of Kalaupapa
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About No Footprints In The Sand - A Memoir Of Kalaupapa
Review "Most of the experience of those who have been afflicted with leprosy in Hawaii the anguish and bereavement, and also the hope and loves and courage has never been told. A truly personal account from within that history is a rare and precious human document. We are all indebted to Henry Nalaielua for the intimacy and candor of this narrative, and to Sally-Jo Bowman, who helped to bring it into words." - W.S. Merwin, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (The Carrier of Ladders)"Henry Nalaielua is surely a kupuna of the centuries, whose aloha is unconditional, even through times of escalating changes for Native Hawaiians. A historian storyteller, composer, musician, singer, artist, diplomat and politically savvy health care advocate this is how I know Uncle Henry. No Footprints in the Sand will now be woven into our history for all who call Hawaii home. A must read for Hawaii health care providers." - Emmett Aluli, Molokai physician"No Footprints in the Sand is the inspiring story of a life well lived despite physical affliction, separation from family, the injustice of exile. Henry Nalaielua has faced the challenges of that life with courage, honesty, dignity, and unfailing good humor. In the whole history of Kalauapapa there have been but a handful of books by, or about, the ordinary people who lived and died on that painful shore. No Footprints in the Sand ranks among the best." - Alan Brennert, Moloka'i --back cover blurbsHenry Nalaielua was 10 years old in 1936 when he was forced to leave his parents in Ninole on the Big Island, their third child to be detected with the disease. His new world was dominated by the rules-ridden, paternalist bureaucracy of the Department of Health, first at the former Kalihi leprosy hospital and, later in Kalaupapa.Nalaielua wrote: "We were denied the right to question our medications, even to ask if it had negative side effects or what it was expected to accomplish. With other rules, daily life at Kalihi came down to incarceration, a life sentence with no prospect for parole. It was a death sentence, too, because you would carry the stigma of the disease until the day you died. No matter what, you would always be known as a 'leper.'"Although he freely uses the word "leper," which most other patients consider pejorative, Nalaielua does not take a tone of anger or the viewpoint of a victim. "You build up your own kind of immunity. I've been pretty lucky. I've tried to take things as they come and overcome the feelings." His story is one of rascally adventures of boys who climbed over fences every chance they got. And later, he and friends at the Carville leprosy hospital in Louisiana continued the adventures in road trips around the South.Gov. George Ariyoshi appointed Nalaielua to the state Board of Health and he has been active in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs kupuna program, sharing the story of Kalaupapa with adults and children. Music has been a big part of his life, singing in numerous choirs, playing in bands for parties and luaus, and jamming with visiting professional musicians. Nalaielua's book is "a story of triumph," said co-author Bowman, who lives in Oregon. "He just kind of said, 'Yes, I have this disease, so what?' It's an upper of a book. If it weren't, I wouldn't have worked on it." --Mary Adamski, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, copyright Honolulu Star-Bulletin 2006Although the back cover of Henry Nalaielua's memoir declares it "a journey of exile," there is little sense of exile about this frank and refreshingly unvarnished as-told-to story. Nalaielua starts life in a small Big Island plantation town and has no idea at age 10, accompanying his mother by steamboat to Honolulu, that he, like two of his sisters before him, has Hansen's disease, or that the diagnosis will mean confinement to Kalaupapa, on Moloka'i.When the truth begins to dawn at the gate of Kalihi Hospital, where his mother is turned away in tears and he is confined he is confused and scared. But in the book's very n
