What: Faculty Book Club Read -- Honor Killing by David Stannard
When: May 10th, 3:30-4:40
Where: Library Lab (Library will provide the snacks!)
Our initial foray into faculty book club territory with Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance had a good many readers join the read. Though a discussion meeting time that could work for everyone proved elusive, we ended up having a wonderfully engaging conversation with 6 diehards.
Many readers found the read worthwhile and intriguing, though some "hated it" and couldn't finish. Alas... We can't win 'em all, but if you hate a book, put it down! There are too many other good ones to read and life is short... #JustSaying
For our next read, we've chosen Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case by David Stannard.
In the fall of 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored, aristocratic wife of a young naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape. The ensuing trial let loose a storm of racial and sexual hysteria, but the case against the suspects was scant and the trial ended in a hung jury. Outraged, Thalia’s socialite mother arranged the kidnapping and murder of one of the suspects. In the spectacularly publicized trial that followed, Clarence Darrow came to Hawai’i to defend Thalia’s mother, a sorry epitaph to a noble career.
It is one of the most sensational criminal cases in American history, Stannard has rendered more than a lurid tale. One hundred and fifty years of oppression came to a head in those sweltering courtrooms. In the face of overwhelming intimidation from a cabal of corrupt military leaders and businessmen, various people involved with the case—the judge, the defense team, the jurors, a newspaper editor, and the accused themselves—refused to be cowed. Their moral courage united the disparate elements of the non-white community and galvanized Hawai’i’s rapid transformation from an oppressive white-run oligarchy to the harmonic, multicultural American state it became.
Honor Killing is a great true crime story worthy of Dominick Dunne—both a sensational read and an important work of social history
The library currently has just one copy, but the Hawaii State Public Library System has many copies available.
We have tentatively scheduled a meet and chat session for: May 10th, 3:30-4:30 in the Library Lab.
The library will provide the snacks!
Hope to see you there!
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