Title: Outcast But Not Forsaken: True Stories from a Paraguayan Leper Colony
Author: Maureen Burn [Ethnographer]
Publisher: Plough Publishing House
Year: 1986
Country: Paraguay
168 pages
An ethnography of a Bavarian-born Paraguayan woman with leprosy, collected and expanded upon by a Hutterite sister. Illustrated throughout with line drawings by the narrator, Doña María, as well as others. Interesting both for its descriptions of life in the leper colony and the very present animosity of the Roman Catholic majority for the "Evangelicals," Protestants, and Salvation Army adherents in their midst. Doña María describes being chastised for reading the Bible (as far as I can tell, the implication is that she dares to do so without requiring an intercessor to interpret it for her.)
Oddly, in none of the illustrations, whether by Doña María or others, does anyone appear to have leprosy, though hands and feet are often roughly sketched. On p. 46 there's an illustration where a woman has 6 toes, but I imagine this is accidental rather than deliberate.
I have the paperback edition. If I can, I'll scan that cover.
Read with Nalalelua and Bowman, No Footprints in the Sand: A Memoir of Kalaupapa to compare to the experience of a Hawaiian leper colony.
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