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Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen Kindle Edition

by Liliuokalani (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 1,105 ratings

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In 1893, Liliuokalani, the Queen of Hawaii, was deposed and five years later her nation became an incorporated territory of the United States.

Published shortly after these momentous events, her book Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen is an incredibly personal history of the islands that she was born to rule. Liliuokalani covers from her birth in 1838 through the reigns of her forebears to her own turbulent time as Queen of the Hawaiian Islands.

Written to explain to the world the injustice of her situation and to reclaim the sovereignty which she had lost, the Chicago Daily Tribune claimed that “no scholar or lawyer could have state[d] it more effectively.” But despite her persuasive prose Hawaii never again regained its independence or its monarchy.

Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen is a fascinating history of one of the United States of America’s smallest but most unique states as it was going through significant change at the turn of the twentieth century.

Queen Liliuokalani was the last reigning monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii. She ascended the throne in January of 1891, upon the death of her brother, King David Kalakaua. For years after her overthrow, the Queen sought redress in the Congress and courts of the United States, but her efforts failed. Her autobiographical history Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen is the only work by a Hawaiian monarch and provides insight into her fight to regain her throne and life on Hawaii during the late-nineteenth century.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Following the violent overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Queen Lili‘uokalani sought to not only restore her right to the throne, but to provide a voice for the Hawaiian people. Deposed for her efforts to assert Hawaiian sovereignty, Lili‘uokalani reflects on growing up on the island of Oahu and the sadness with which she has been forced to leave everything behind.

About the Author

Lili'uokalani was the first queen and last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, ruling from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893.

Emily Woo Zeller is an artist, actor, dancer, choreographer, and voice artist who has won Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013 for her work in Gulp. Other awards include the 2009 Tristen Award for Best Actress as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the 2006 Roselyn E. Schneider Prize for Creative Achievement.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01LZFUM2T
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oceanic Press (September 11, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 11, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3065 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 262 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #100,844 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2 in Hawaii Travel Guides (Kindle Store)
- #9 in Pacific Islanders Biographies
- #28 in History of Western U.S.

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Jan

her sweet, yet humble spirit poured out in every page

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2017

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This woman was a remarkable "Regal" lady. She wrote with such capability, her sweet, yet humble spirit poured out in every page. Having spent a substantial number of years living in Hawaii, I am very familiar with the stories of the power plays which resulted in the takeover of the Islands by the United States. There is little doubt that this was a very black period in our American History. She spoke with such sadness as her way of life, and the very way of life of her people and country were wrested from them. Hawaii is a part of my emotional DNA -- I love the people and the strong, sweet and kind way they share their lives with all who visit. It is tragic that there are so very few real Hawaiians left today (2017) -- yet the spirit of the islands lives on. Read her story, sing her songs, and feel the spirit of both this remarkable lady, and her incredible life!

9 people found this helpful

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eledavf Vivian

A Great Queen. The story of imperialism.

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2014

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I loved this book. Every phrase is elegant and precisely used. This style of composition, once the hallmark of the best writing, will be appreciated by anyone who relishes the English language.

This remarkable Queen recounts the victimization of Hawaii and how she and her forbears tried to preserve the islands as a free nation.

Hawaii’s loss of nationhood began with the arrival of New England Protestant missionaries, self-righteous and eager to proselytize but before long ready to exploit and dispossess. They and their descendants found chickens ready for plucking: a fertile tropical Island of unsuspecting natives who could be ensnared in crooked politics and cheated in land deals.

Gradually Hawaii was transformed. Instead of preserving its self-sustaining rural lifestyle, it became the prey of scavengers, the modern barons. Pre-eminent among them was the Dole family which turned the age-old system of small, personal farms into acres of pineapple fields worked by thousands of Chinese “coolies”.

In time, this new, wealthy class, using threats and schemes, succeeded in taking control of the government. The Queen’s predecessors yielded of necessity, unable to prevent the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of native inhabitants. Only a tenth of the populace could now vote.

Becoming Queen on the death of her brother, Liliuokalani faced alone the implacable empire builders.

Powerful interests were working to join Hawaii to the United States. Admiral Mahan, with his worship of sea power, saw that these magnificent islands offered more than plantations: their central position in the Pacific promised an ideal harbor for provisioning ships, dominating shipping lanes and threatening the Asiatic rim. In the end, the Queen’s enemies resorted to brute force and it was finally the marines who trampled on the rights of the Hawaiian people.

The Queen was a truly great lady, highly educated, a remarkable writer, a gifted composer (of that heartbreaking hymn to Hawaii, Aloha Oe). Besides a brilliant mind, she possessed a powerful sense of justice and enormous compassion for her Hawaiian subjects. Her patriotism was the pure kind, not that vicious distortion so diligently nurtured in the conquering nation, that chauvinism which features contempt for other cultures as its hallmark. She repeatedly speaks kindly and admiringly of the United States in all respects but this one: that a nation blessed with endless horizons and all the bountiful gifts of nature should covet yet more land, even islands so far from its shores.

In addition, being always able to appreciate personal kindness, she speaks warmly and gratefully of President Grover Cleveland. And she remembers President McKinley as a consummate gentleman toward a woman, a fallen Queen and a supplicant for her nation.

Her bitterest scorn is reserved for John Leavitt Stevens, the United States Minister to the Kingdom of Hawaii, whose slander turned the government at Washington and the American public against the Royal Family. John Stevens was a figure of Dickensian evil and duplicity, a liar, traducer, schemer, truly the symbol of everything despicable about American colonial policy. He was a fanatic of the sort any decent person would loathe. Such men are a curse to any nation; how criminal that he should have been foisted on the unfortunate Hawaiians. But of course, like all ambassadors, he was carefully chosen for his dishonesty and unscrupulousness. It is astonishing that there is never a scarcity of ruthless functionaries to be inflicted on foreign lands.

John Stevens could be counted on to tell his fellow conspirators in Congress what they wanted to hear. With this type of scoundrel a coup d’etat can be guaranteed, and it was.

Besides forcing the Queen to abdicate and imprisoning her to stifle her voice, her enemies did not hesitate to lie. She was accused of threatening to cut off the heads of her country’s persecutors, a calumny taught as late as the1940’s and perhaps later -- in volumes called history books.

Occasionally chickens do come home to roost and they came for John Stevens, whose daughter drowned while returning from a trip to one of the islands to gather signatures for another of her father’s crooked schemes. This loss darkened the rest of his life.

For the truth about this crime against an island people, I strongly recommend Queen Liliuokalani’s history of colonial aggression and domination ending in the tawdry drama of marines marching ashore and surrounding the government buildings of a sovereign nation.

76 people found this helpful

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Susanna Richardson

Bigger than I was expecting

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2020

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I think this is an important book because it gives us the views of the Hawaiian people to the United States at the end of the 19th century. It was, however, larger than I expected. It resembles a book of piano music, rather than a normal sized reading book. Other than that I have no complaints. Good price, good quality, and good story.

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RDD

Forces Americans to Reexamine American Imperialism

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2017

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Part autobiography, part political history, Queen Lili‘uokalani’s "Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani" tells her story and that of Hawai‘i from her youth through the time of her publication in 1898. The overall impression the reader receives is of a monarchy very similar to those throughout Europe, especially when Queen Lili‘uokalani details her journey to England for Queen Victoria’s jubilee. While these personal stories and travelogues add context, the bulk of the narrative deals with the Hawaiian monarchy and the manner in which American planters subverted it.
Writing of Kalakaua and the slanders that followed him, Queen Lili‘uokalani states, “The conclusion cannot be avoided, that if my brother had indeed sought his own pleasure rather than the good of all residents under our flag, his family would be in their hereditary rights to this day. By his liberality to those of American birth he inaugurated the treaty of reciprocity; … and he thus devoted the earlier part of his reign to the aggrandizement of the very persons, who, as soon as they had become rich and powerful, forgot his generosity, and plotted a subversion of his authority, and an overthrow of the constitution under which the kingdom had been happily governed for nearly a quarter of a century” (pg. 96). As to the American planters themselves, Queen Lili‘uokalani writes, “As they became wealthy, and acquired titles and lands through the simplicity of our people and their ignorance of value and of the new land laws, their greed and their love of power proportionately increased; and schemes for aggrandizing themselves still further, or for avoiding the obligations which they had incurred to us, began to occupy their minds” (pg. 209). She adds, “It may be true that they really believed us unfit to be trusted to administer the growing wealth of the Islands in a safe and proper way. But if we manifested any incompetency, it was in not foreseeing that they would be bound by no obligations, by honor, or by oath of allegiance, should an opportunity arise for seizing our country, and bringing it under the authority of the United States” (pg. 210).
One of the first efforts of the American planters to assume control over the monarchy resulted in the so-called Bayonet Constitution (1887). Of the king’s singing it, Queen Lili‘uokalani writes, “It may be asked, ‘Why did the king give them his signature?’ I answer without hesitation, because he had discovered traitors among his most trusted friends and knew not in whom he could trust; and because he had every assurance, short of actual demonstration, that the conspirators were ripe for revolution, and had taken measures to have him assassinated if he refused” (pg. 212). Queen Lili‘uokalani details her ascent to the throne and short reign, followed by her forced abdication. She denies the charges of American planters that it was by her choice, but writes, “For myself, I would have chosen death rather than to have signed it; but it was represented to me that by my signing this paper all the persons who had been arrested [attempting to restore the monarchy], all my people now in trouble by reason of their love and loyalty towards me, would be immediately released” (pg. 316).
Judge Thomas K. Kaulukukui Jr., Judge Patrick K.S.L. Yim, and Dr. Claire L. Asam, the board of trustees of the Queen Lili‘uokalani Trust, conclude, “While it may appear to the modern reader simply as a ‘memoir’ of Hawai‘i’s last monarch, the objective of the book was not to be a bittersweet life story of a deposed monarch, but rather to build a case against the American League in Hawai‘i; to examine and expose the matter of American intervention into Hawaiian politics; and to present a plea to Americans in general, and to members of the U.S. Congress in particular, to consider the retention of Hawaiian sovereignty, rather than proceeding with the annexation of the Islands by the United States” (pg. xv). This narrative forces Americans to reexamine American imperialism and how it subverted our national principles. The annotated edition of "Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani", published by the Queen Lili‘uokalani Trust and Hui Hānai features extensive notes and photographs of the queen and those around her, further adding to this volume’s use as a primary source.

46 people found this helpful

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Olana

True American History

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2024

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Affordable.

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Paulo Melo

Hawaii past

Reviewed in Spain on August 27, 2022

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Gostei muito para saber história do Hawai. Muito interessante aqueles tempos.
Não gostei do formato do texto. Muito denso.

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Pauline

Hawaiis Queen

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2023

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Fantastic read, so interesting

Amazon Customer

Some difficulties reading this

Reviewed in Canada on February 26, 2020

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This is a non fiction book about history of Hawaii. It is written by Queen Liliuokalani.
Sometimes difficult to read as English is not the writers first language. Many run on sentences etc. But a good read. Hans R.

Ambas capa e pelicula maioes que o kindle. capa presa com fita isolante e pelicula tive que mandar cortar -\ambas maiores que o KINDLE 10

Hawaii story by queen

Reviewed in Brazil on September 18, 2019

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Livro não aparece ni kindle

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eve

History Talks.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 5, 2021

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