Remembering Iosepa: History, Place, and Religion in the American West
"Kester masterfully situates the story of nineteenth-century Native Hawaiian Mormon migration within the larger seascape of Native Hawaiian and, later, Pacific Islander migrations...What Kester does very well throughout the book is present the history in vivid color. The reader is drawn into the story through vignettes...Remembering Iosepais beautifully written and accessible to a general and academic audience." --Mormon Studies Review"Remembering Iosepais a brilliant piece of scholarship.  Kester s work is much needed for scholars of both Mormonism and Hawaiian studies...I would place this book in my top five must read list." --Dominic Martinez,The Juvenile Instructor"'Remembering Iosepa' is a significant contribution to both Mormon and Pacific history, and serves as a model for how Mormon studies can be efficiently used as a provocative sub field of broader issues. Students of the Oceana, of Western America, of Utah, and of Mormonism will be well served to spend time with this book, not only incorporating its important story into our broader narratives but also appropriating its sophisticated framing and methodology into our own scholarship." --Association for Mormon Letters"A fascinating and illuminating study, suitable for a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended." --CHOICE"[An] example of the new generation of Mormon historical studies: it blends exhaustive research with sophisticated theory to address issues much broader than Mormonism itself...Its intended audience is much larger than [the Mormon Historical Association]--though it should certainly be an important contribution to that field, as well." --Juvenile Instructor"Matthew Kester begins with a grain of sand - the Native Hawaiian community of Iosepa, Utah - and builds a story that embraces more than a century of Oceania's history.  His sensitive ear and engaging prose take us on a voyage from the eighteenth-century colonization of Hawaii to the Pacific Islander diaspora across western North America, from the struggle to retain indigenous space in their homelands to the recreation of indigenous places in locations as various as British Columbia and the Great Basin.  In this journey we see contest and accommodation over faith, race, and memory, a journey that continues to unfold in the twenty-first century."-- James F. Brooks, president and CEO, School for Advance Research, Santa Fe, NM, and author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands"Remembering Iosepa, is part of an expanding body of scholarship that frames Hawai'i and Hawaiians not as victims of history but rather as active agents eagerly participating in the social milieu in which they lived...He masterfully demonstrates that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which continues to be misunderstood and marginalized within American history, was a key player in westward expansion and settlement despite being targeted by the US federal government as un-American and by non-Mormon settlers who saw their practices as peculiar and at times sinister. By focusing on the intersection of religion and race, Kester gives us a balanced and critical account showing how the history of the American West is also a Hawaiian history of eastward expansion and settlement. The result is a complex, contentious, and contradictory historical landscape that challenges the way we see the American West and Hawai'i."--Hokulani K. Aikau, author of A Chosen People, a Promised Land"In this remarkable book about a truly remarkable place and people, Kester offers us a history of the transnational Pacific World, of Oceania, and the American West, of religion, race, travelers, and diasporas, of sacrifice, memory, and commemoration."--Matthew Basso, University of Utah