Book cover of Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii

Book description

1983: by Ronald Takaki- Life on the plantation from 1835-1920.

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pau Hana as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Pau Hana is a concise overview of the immigration of workers from around the Pacific and the world, which created Hawai‘i's multiethnic community in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The immigrants were recruited by the Hawaiian Monarchy and white sugar planters as laborers for their highly profitable plantations. Workers arrived from China, Portugal, Japan, Puerto Rico, Korea, the Philippines, and even Norway, and settled in the islands. Takaki details the work they did, the camp housing, the abuses and retaliation, the opium and alcohol, the gambling and prostitution, and the worker strikes that eventually resulted in better wages and…

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