Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory

Chapter 41. “My Name Is Olivia”: Kalaupapa’s First Author

495 41 “My Name Is Olivia” Kalaupapa’s First Author when olivia breitha died on September 28, 2006, at the age of ninety, articles about her life and death appeared in newspapers and Web sites in at least seventeen different states and in places as diverse as India, the United Kingdom, and Portugal. News of her efforts to ensure the rights of every individual appeared in the most well-known newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Miami Herald. Olivia would probably have been most proud about the fact that her obituary appeared on the Web site of Civil Rights Today. The BBC did an in-depth report on her life and death on the same program in which they reported the death of P. W. Botha, former prime minister and president of South Africa.1 Olivia was well known in part because she had published her autobiography in 1988, some fifty-one years after she first arrived at Kalaupapa. Olivia: My Life of Exile in Kalaupapa was the first autobiography written by someone who had been sent to Kalaupapa.2 Olivia was also one of only two women who had leprosy in the United States to write their autobiography, the other being Betty Martin at Carville. Olivia wrote her autobiography to educate people and to try and sensitize them to terminology so that they wouldn’t refer to people by labels that took away their identity and humanity . She was determined that people have the opportunity to meet Olivia, the human being, someone who had spent her whole life expressing her individuality in the face of society’s­attempt to rob her of it: “My name is Olivia. It is not L-E-P-E-R. I don’t Olivia Breitha with Darikka Scollard at the Kalaupapa airport. Photo by Anwei Law. My Name Is Olivia    497 want to be treated like a patient all the rest of my life. . . . I wrote a book because I wanted people to know what I feel, what I felt, how much I struggled, fighting the disease, fighting bureaucrats, trying not to be a statistic, trying to be a person.”3 Olivia’s book was based on the journal she kept over many years, and consequently it invites the reader into her life in a very personal way. She never held back on her emotions, be they joy, anger, frustration, or love. When people met Olivia, they often felt they had known her for years, like they were family. When they read her book, they were often prompted to respond in some way, such as the person who sent her twelve teddy bears, which Olivia then shared with others. One of her favorites was a simple little tan bear with big eyes that she named “Honey Bear.” Olivia’s first entry in her journal was Labor Day, 1974: “You know something, dear Journal? I now realize that I am too strong willed. I think I must change that.”4 Olivia would often be found at night writing in tears as she remembered those she left: Olivia as a teenager at the “Caller Line” at Kalihi Hospital, courtesy of Olivia Breitha. right: Olivia meets actor Richard Chamberlain at a reception for Quest for Dignity at Washington Place in Honolulu. Photo by Pamela Parlapiano. 498   chapter forty-one loved and the rules that separated them. It was painful to recall the burning of the bakery that her parents started at Kalaupapa in order to be close to her, and how she was not allowed to hug them after the fire: “Poor darlings, they looked so lost and so alone. My heart went out to them. It still does when I think of how much they lost. I couldn’t touch and comfort them. . . . We could only comfort each other by words.”5 In remembering the sudden death of her husband John when they were at Carville for surgery, she wrote, “Each time someone hugged me, I cried all over again. Everyone was so kind to me but I knew that I was alone. No more could I go to my dearest friend with my sorrow. He was no more. The feeling of loss still comes over me, even today.”6 Throughout the latter part of her life, Olivia had to deal with many problems relating to her foot and...