SAMOA ON MY MIND

Retired ophthalmologist Hung’s memoir of trips to Samoa and American Samoa honors a 50-year friendship.

In 1970, at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, the Chinese-born author met Samoan John Fasifilifili Paopao, a fellow student with whom he became fast friends and to whom this book is dedicated. Over the years, they kept in touch, and in 2004, Hung joined Paopao on a trip to American Samoa with a group of doctors to offer assistance to locals. Hung hands the narration over to Paopao at this point in the narrative, and he describes day-to-day experiences inside and outside of the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center in an amusing way, as when he describes his fellow doctors dancing after a long day of work: “After feasting, spontaneous dancing broke out with Doug being the master of the electric slide.” The structure of the memoir jumps around a bit, encompassing a history of Samoa and a chapter about Robert Louis Stevenson, whose home Hung visited on a subsequent trip to Samoa in 2014. Although Hung explicitly states in an author’s note that the book isn’t intended as a travel guide, readers won’t be able to help but feel that they’re becoming acquainted with many details of Samoan culture, politics, and economics as well as the region’s natural beauty and the friendliness of many residents. The accounts of medical cases are technical but accessible, such as one about a teenager’s paintball injury to the eye and a discussion of Paopao’s work with cleft lip and palate repair. Hung is an amusing and straightforward narrator, but he doesn’t shy away from discussing the heaviness of the medical workload for those working in the Samoan islands or corruption in the Samoan government. However, he consistently searches for connection and understanding while highlighting his deep friendship with Paopao.

An immersive and expansive, yet highly personal, account of a compelling locale and its people.