I liked the fact that the happiest night of my life was followed by a day like any other. It seemed to say that such happiness, so long denied, was now a part of my everyday life.
How stupid could she be to think a clean person would love her -- would risk death and decay and banishment for love!
After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.
Then Rachel said, Mama used to tell me that God saw everything, knew everything, even what was in our hearts.Yes, Catherine agreed, especially there.So, He'd know, wouldn't he, what kind of pain was i...
No. Grief and anger doesn’t shock me. Catherine paused. Rachel, do you remember that day at the convent when we saw the old biplane? Remember what I said? Rachel laughed without amusement. I don’t eve...
Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.
It was disquieting to Eddie, this jarring contrast between the bright, cheery atmosphere inside Palisades and the slowly darkening world outside it. As calliope music played and diapered babies crawle...
It slowly dawned on the volunteers that they were not patients but subjects; separated from their friends and community in Kalaupapa, they felt like outcasts among outcasts.
God didn’t give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. I’ve come t...
Before Cook’s arrival the native population of Hawai'i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.
An empty cart rattles loudly, she said, meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest.
He took her in his arms and cradled her; offering her not God's comfort but his own, merely human, consolation.
Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.'...God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity...
When we are young, we think life will be like a supo: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths-bits and pieces, odds and ends-people,...
We moved into Jade Moon's rooming house within the week, and slowly she and I found that our friendship, though damaged, was like fabric torn on the seam: not beyond repair.
Unemployment in America became, almost overnight, a thing of the past as the Federal government pumped billions of dollars into defense.
The difference between Old Honolulu and New, she would come to decide, was the difference between a beautiful woman who was simply being herself and a beautiful woman calling attention to herself: a l...
I am secure in the knowledge that I am the mother of your heart, Etsuko said, smiling. But she is the mother of your blood. She deserves to see what a fine woman you have become
And sometimes she would dream again of being Namakaokahai'i, her waves rolling across burled coral beds, scattering moonlight, cresting higher and higher the farther she traveled over the reef. She wa...
She bid me to look out on the lawn at the leper girls who were running on lame feet, playing croquet with crippled hands.There is beauty, she said, in the least beautiful of things.