Leper: the term for someone suffering from Hansen’s disease (the official name for leprosy) and a pejorative term used to isolate someone as an outsider and as untouchable. At one time Hansen’s disease was thought to be contagious like tuberculosis, and people with that diagnosis were isolated in hospitals and colonies away from family and friends. As late as 2011 there were ten people living at the National Hansen’s Disease Museum (formerly a federal hospital for Hansen’s disease) in Carville, Louisiana. Opened in 1894, it officially closed in 1999. However, last remaining residents are apparently being allowed to live out their lives, as they have lived nowhere else.[1]
Out of the Shadow of Leprosy offers a glimpse into several generations of one family that was intimately knowledgeable about the disease and its effects in all realms of life, from the physical and psychological to the social and cultural. An entire generation of Clair Manes’s family (her grandfather and his four siblings) was diagnosed with Hansen’s disease and lived and died (most of them) at the facility in Carville.
Through the correspondence, largely from Manes’s grandfather Edmond Landry, we are offered a glimpse of life as a leper, ostracized not just from society but estranged from his wife, Claire, and his children, mostly through her choice. The letters, by turn cajoling, angry, but always descriptive, sketch a man trying to live a normal life in very abnormal circumstances.
The author, Claire Manes, who was born more than a decade after Landry’s death, provides familial and historical context for the letters from Edmond, his brother Norbert, and sisters Amelie and Marie. A final brother, Albert, was also at the facility but there is no existing correspondence from him. Manes does remember Albert fondly, having had the most contact with him among that generation of the Landry family. She also provides an at times wrenching commentary about the relationship between her grandparents Edmond and Claire, especially after Edmond’s hospitalization at Carville. Her grandmother, whom she remembers as a loving and kind woman, did not treat her husband in this way. Many of the letters have Edmond begging for visits or asking to come home, which Claire seemed to mostly deny.
This book follows Marcia Gaudet’s Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America and indeed came about from a student worker in Gaudet’s department at the University of Louisiana. He had overheard a conversation about Gaudet’s work and approached her. He was Chris Manes, the great grandson of Edmond Landry (known by the name Gabe Michael at Carville, as many of the residents took on aliases to protect their families) and Claire Manes is his aunt.
This book is best used in partnership with Gaudet’s in a folklore class, or with other works about Hansen’s disease or the Carville facility. Otherwise there is not enough context for the work to stand on its own. It is really of most interest to members of the Landry family and people interested in Hansen’s disease.
[1] Diana Lambdin Meyer. “Visiting the Leper Colony at Carville, Louisiana.” May 13, 2011. http://mojotraveler.com/visiting-the-leper-colony-at-carville-louisiana/
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[Review length: 510 words • Review posted on May 31, 2017]