Women's Voices in Hawaii

by Joyce Lebra

Sometimes when our elders tell us about the old days of Hawai'i, we hear a sugar-coated version. Joyce Chapman Lebra's oral history of women, from turn-of-20th-century Hawai'i to the Second World War, lets the women tell it like it was.

Shaping Hawai'i: The Voices of Women is a world of picture brides, arranged marriages, oppressive labor conditions, abuse, filial duties, and the loss of family. Amidst all this, there was also a world of love and courtship, mutual aid societies, communal bread ovens, midwives, and willing sacrifice to educate children.

Dr. Lebra takes us into the lives of women from nine ethnic groups who saw the birth and early decades of the 20th century in Hawai'i. Hawaiian, Scottish-English, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Okinawan, Puerto-Rican, Korean, Filipina. The women tell their stories in their own words - genuine and compelling accounts of their trials and triumphs.

Dr. Lebra's interviews were conducted in the late 1980s. The interviewees were mostly octogenarians; many of them are now gone. Without her work, details of these women's contributions to the ornate quilt of Hawai'i life would have been lost.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1991

About the author

Joyce Lebra, also known as Joyce Chapman Lebra, was an American historian of Japan and India and the celebrated author of nine non–fiction titles and three novels. She was a scholar of Japan and notable professor emeritus at the University of Colorado.