The Mahele of Our Bodies: Nā Moʻolelo Kūpuna Māhū/LGBTQ

“They put up barriers, the same way with our bodies. Our bodies are meant for us to be very expressive. Hawaiians were like that. . . . To me it was an expression of the mahele of our bodies, the restriction of our bodies, the control of our expression of our bodies.”—Kuʻumeaaloha GomesGenerated from the life histories of ten Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) elders (kūpuna) who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or māhū (LGBTQM), this book reveals the way they experienced overlapping Native/Indigenous and LGBTQM identities. The Mahele of Our Bodies: Nā Moʻolelo Kūpuna Māhū/LGBTQ is filled with rich descriptions of Hawaiʻi’s unwritten queer history, from growing up in the late Territory era and Hawai‘i’s transition to a state, to vivid descriptions of Honolulu nightlife in the 1960s and 1970s, the impact of HIV/AIDS in the hula community, and first-person accounts of the activism and political debates surrounding same-sex marriage rights in the 1990s.Each life history explore