Her recollection is imo worthless.
Monika Danielson is one account. You can dismiss it if you want, but it sounded perfectly credible to me.
Cindy Pratt, the furniture store owner's daughter, was also there at the time. According to Maraniss, she called the birth of little Barry "a scandal and a half". "Mostly in those days anything interracial was frowned upon. I remember we were all shocked. Today it wouldn't be anything. In those days it was kind of kept quiet or whatever." Maraniss continues, "For Stan to imply that the little boy was native Hawaiian was mostly an inside joke, but also a way to protect the family, even in Hawaii, where there were more interracial marriages than in any other state."
In view of that, it shouldn't be so surprising that Monika Danielson noticed one baby out of the ordinary in the hospital nursery — out of the ordinary even for Hawaii in 1961. After all, most of the babies would have been asian-asian, white-asian, or white-white. But there was one who was white-anthracite-black!
That is all quite interesting, given the positive reception the U of H's first African foreign student allegedly received. The locals were
immediately taken by the one and only African student in their midst. "He was very black, probably the blackest person I've ever met," recalled [Pake] Zane, a Chinese-Hawaiian, who now runs an antiques shop a few miles from the university."Handsome in his own way," Zane said. "But the most impressive thing was his voice. His voice and his inflection -- he had this Oxford accent. You heard a little Kenyan English, but more this British accent with this really deep, mellow voice that just resounded. If he said something in the room and the room was not real noisy, everybody stopped and turned around. I mean he just had this wonderful, wonderful voice. He was charismatic as a speaker."
For him, Anarchist Annie was a push-over.
Maraniss can write what he likes, the Pratt daughter, he claims, told him the birth of 'little Barry' was a scandal and a half...
Really? She was only thirteen in 1961. She said 'we were all shocked'
In those days it was kind of kept quiet or whatever
Do I take it then that the family sat around the kitchen table, the Pratts and the Dunhams and talked about how shocked they were?
I'm just a little wary of discussions that veer all over the place - why bother to describe what the Kenyan student looked like and how deep his voice was. Then you add, for good measure;
For him, Anarchist Annie was a push-over.
That's pretty pathetic, considering the only place they ever met was in dreams. That's Dreams From My Father.
That's it from me. Having a different POV has never been popular here. I can wait until it all comes out in the wash, but can you?
‘[Cindy Pratt] called the birth of little Barry “a scandal and a half”.’
She absolutely did nothing of the kind. She said that Stanley Ann having a mixed race son was the scandal. She said nothing about the birth. In context, she is talking about a little boy, not a baby.