Moloka'i

As an example of historical fiction, Moloka’i brings together accurate and detailed discussions of Hawai’i’s past and fictionalized depictions of families impacted by that history. As with all historical fiction, there is truth to both the events recorded and the characters imagined.

While Rachel is not located in an archive nor is her existence verified in newspapers or obituaries, she embodies qualities and actions found in Hawai’i’s historical record. Hansen’s disease and the genre of historical fiction, along with their intersections, prove central to understanding Rachel Kalama’s fictional, yet realistic and historical, role in Moloka’i. Alan Brennert depends on archival materials—some of which he includes in the “Reading Guide” at the end of the book—and the documentation of confinement and quarantine at Moloka’i to bring Rachel Kalama to life. Dramatizing the known facts of Moloka’i, Hansen’s disease, and Hawai’i, the novel depicts how Rachel changes and reacts to challenges—first of confinement and, later, increasing freedom.

The first part of the novel details the verifiable end of the Hawaiian monarchy, as the king dies on a trip to America and a committee of rich Americans usurp the throne after his sister and successor proposes a new constitution. Brennert juxtaposes these historical facts, including the American failure to reinstate the queen, alongside Rachel’s and her Uncle Pono’s diagnoses, as the personal bonds between Pono and Rachel echo those of the king and his sister. The second part of the novel depicts the settlements for those with Hansen’s disease on Moloka’i, both Kalaupapa and Kalawao. This second part stresses the power of the colonists and the role that Christianity plays in the conquest of Hawai’i and the erasure of native culture and history. Rachel’s love of surfing and Haleola’s teachings about Hawai’i’s mythological and legendary history offer points of resistance to colonial influences.

Parts 3 and 4 describe the events of World War II and Pearl Harbor, along with medical developments that slow the progression and spread of Hansen’s disease, showing how a certain kind of “progress” has both negative and positive effects on Hawai’i. Ravaged by war and attacks, the Honolulu in the novel rebuilds under martial law, while the technological advances that haole (meaning foreign) doctors introduce allow those exiled to Kalaupapa to leave. Ruth, Rachel’s daughter, languishes in a concentration camp in California due to her Japanese ancestry, and her father Kenji’s death demonstrates the effect of bias felt against people of Japanese descent. Both of these details reflect the historical reality of the Western ethnocentrism of the time period. Progress for Rachel brings both joy and pain in the form of medical marvels that help her and, simultaneously, some of the horrors inflicted on Hawaii through war and conquest.

Each of these four parts function to not only depict the factual story of Hawai’i from 1898 to 1970, but also to help bring Rachel to life and show the effects of Hansen’s disease beyond the clinical definitions. Like the history of Hawai’i that Moloka’i contains, factual knowledge of Hansen’s disease enlivens Brennert’s depiction of Rachel. Her survival of Hansen’s disease and social violence followed by her thriving after leaving Moloka’i explains how, in the end, “Rachel’s face showed the scoring of time, certainly of tragedy, but also of a life well lived: of laughter and adventure as much as grief and ill fortune” (381). Carefully deploying historical facts of Hawai’i and Hansen’s disease, Moloka’i establishes a kind of truth in fiction, as Rachel responds to history and Hansen’s disease in ways that are human and understandable. The Moloka’i Settlement did exist, and Rachel seems just as real.