Dr. Sandra Bonura: Prayer & Politics in 19th Century Hawaii
619-236-5800 www.sdfocl.org r. Sandra Bonura is the July, Author of the Month. Dr. Bonura ‘s talk is entitled “Prayer & Politics in 19th Century Hawaii”. The talk will take place July 7, at 1:00-2:30 pm in the Mary Hollis Clark Room. Refreshments will be served. Dr. Bonura, a native San Diegan is deeply interested in education, history and Hawaiʻi, and when they merge, there is instant engagement. Her four published works emanating from primary sources are Light in the Queen’s Garden, Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawaii’s Daughters, 2017 by the University of Hawai’i Press, An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: The Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter (1890-1893), 2012 by the University of Hawai’i Press, Queen Lili’uokalani’s Beloved Kawaiaha’o Seminary 2017 issue of the Hawaiian Journal of History (volume 51) and “Lydia K. Aholo—Her Story, Recovering the Lost Voice” 2013 issue of The Hawaiian Journal of History (volume 47). She is a frequent storyteller and lecturer on the importance of using a multitude of primary sources to gain perspectives on single events in history. To that end, she provided a unique viewpoint in a newly released documentary, “Lili`uokalani, Recollections of our Queen. Her book, Light in the Queen’s Garden is an historical account of a woman from the heartland of America who landed in the Kingdom of Hawai`i at the end of the 19th century. When young Ida Pope accepted a “temporary” teaching job in a boarding school for Hawaiian girls, founded by American missionaries and led by Queen Lili’uokalani. Nor could she have envisioned she would become closely involved in the greatest political turmoil the Hawaiians had ever experienced. Newly discovered primary sources are used to flesh out and enliven the historical account of the 1893 Hawaiian Revolution that happened literally outside the school’s windows. As Hawai`i moved into the 20th century Ida tenaciously confronted the growing concentration of outside economic power and worked tirelessly to attain social reforms for Hawaiian women. But the male-dominated society and their Victorian views sought to thwart her efforts. Undaunted, Pope, the pragmatic activist, achieved on a small island what other extraordinary women like Jane Addams, Ida Tarbell and Lillian Wald did concurrently in her homeland. Unpublished diaries, letters, scrapbooks, oral history recording and rare photos discovered in an antique trunk donated to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, tell a story that has never been told before. .