Author: Nicholas J. Goetzfridt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313369887
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Oceania has a rich and growing literary tradition. The imaginative literature that emerged in the 1960s often reflected the forms and structures of European literature, though the ideas expressed were typically anticolonial. After three decades, the literature of Oceania has become much more complex, in terms of style as well as content; and authors write in a multiplicity of styles and voices. While the written literature of Oceania is continuously gaining more critical attention, questions about the imposition of European literary standards and values as a further extension of colonialism in the Pacific have become a central issue. This book is a detailed survey of the expanding amount of critical and interpretive material written about the imaginative literature of authors from Oceania. It focuses on commentary and scholarship concerned with the poetry, fiction, and drama written in English by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. The criticisms have appeared in academic books and journals since the mid-1960s. They have developed to the point at which critical issues, related to decolonization and the expression of ideas without having to first satisfy foreign expectations, often determine the direction of such discussions. Entries are grouped in topical chapters, and each entry includes an extensive annotation. An introductory essay summarizes the evolution of Pacific literature.
Author: Evelyn Flores
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824877381
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding—and distinctly Micronesian—voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia’s historical and literary landscape. Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region—from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors. Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia’s resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: “Origins” explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; “Resistance” responds to colonialism and militarism; “Remembering” captures diverse memories and experiences; “Identities” articulates the nuances of culture; “Voyages” maps migration and diaspora; “Family” delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and “New Micronesia” gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices. This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.
Author: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824893514
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
In this anthology of contemporary eco-literature, the editors have gathered an ensemble of a hundred emerging, mid-career, and established Indigenous writers from Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the global Pacific diaspora. This book itself is an ecological form with rhizomatic roots and blossoming branches. Within these pages, the reader will encounter a wild garden of genres, including poetry, chant, short fiction, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, visual texts, and even a dramatic play—all written in multilingual offerings of English, Pacific languages, pidgin, and translation. Seven main themes emerge: “Creation Stories and Genealogies,” “Ocean and Waterscapes,” “Land and Islands,” “Flowers, Plants, and Trees,” “Animals and More-than-Human Species,” “Climate Change,” and “Environmental Justice.” This aesthetic diversity embodies the beautiful bio-diversity of the Pacific itself. The urgent voices in this book call us to attention—to action!—at a time of great need. Pacific ecologies and the lives of Pacific Islanders are currently under existential threat due to the legacy of environmental imperialism and the ongoing impacts of climate change. While Pacific writers celebrate the beauty and cultural symbolism of the ocean, islands, trees, and flowers, they also bravely address the frightening realities of rising sea levels, animal extinction, nuclear radiation, military contamination, and pandemics. Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures reminds us that we are not alone; we are always in relation and always ecological. Humans, other species, and nature are interrelated; land and water are central concepts of identity and genealogy; and Earth is the sacred source of all life, and thus should be treated with love and care. With this book as a trusted companion, we are inspired and empowered to reconnect with the world as we navigate towards a precarious yet hopeful future.
Author: Sina Va'ai
Publisher: Conran Octopus
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
Author: Michelle Keown
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019152798X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region. Drawing upon metaphors of oceanic voyaging, Michelle Keown takes the reader on a discursive journey through a variety of literary and cultural contexts in the Pacific, exploring the Indigenous literatures of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and also investigating a range of European or Western writing about the Pacific, from the adventure fictions of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson, and Jack London to the Päkehä (European) settler literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book explores the relevance of 'international' postcolonial theoretical paradigms to a reading of Pacific literatures, but it also offers a region-specific analysis of key authors and texts, drawing upon indigenous Pacific literary theories, and sketching in some of the key socio-historical trajectories that have inflected Pacific writing. Well-established Indigenous Pacific authors such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and Patricia Grace are considered alongside emerging writers such as Sia Figiel, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. The book focuses primarily upon Pacific literature in English - the language used by the majority of Pacific writers - but also breaks new ground in examining the growing corpus of francophone and hispanophone writing in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Easter Island/Rapa Nui.
Author: Eva Rask Knudsen
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042010482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
In Aboriginal and Māori literature, the circle and the spiral are the symbolic metaphors for a never-ending journey of discovery and rediscovery. The journey itself, with its indigenous perspectives and sense of orientation, is the most significant act of cultural recuperation. The present study outlines the fields of indigenous writing in Australia and New Zealand in the crucial period between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s - particularly eventful years in which postcolonial theory attempted to 'centre the margins' and indigenous writers were keen to escape the particular centering offered in search of other positions more in tune with their creative sensibilities. Indigenous writing relinquished its narrative preference for social realism in favour of traversing old territory in new spiritual ways; roots converted into routes. Standard postcolonial readings of indigenous texts often overwrite the 'difference' they seek to locate because critical orthodoxy predetermines what 'difference' can be. Critical evaluations still tend to eclipse the ontological grounds of Aboriginal and Māori traditions and specific ways of moving through and behaving in cultural landscapes and social contexts. Hence the corrective applied in Circles and Spirals - to look for locally and culturally specific tracks and traces that lead in other directions than those catalogued by postcolonial convention. This agenda is pursued by means of searching enquiries into the historical, anthropological, political and cultural determinants of the present state of Aboriginal and Māori writing (principally fiction). Independent yet interrelated exemplary analyses of works by Keri Hulme and Patricia Grace and Mudrooroo and Sam Watson (Australia) provided the 'thick description' that illuminates the author's central theses, with comparative side-glances at Witi Ihimaera, Heretaunga Pat Baker and Alan Duff (New Zealand) and Archie Weller and Sally Morgan (Australia).
Author: Alice Te Punga Somerville
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816677565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Explores the relationship between indigeneity and migration among Maori and Pacific peoples
Author: Matthew Hayward
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000576612
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies’ critical map. Yet, as the chapters of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences — realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film — Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities. New Oceania presents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.
Author: Judith M. Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The peoples of Oceania are struggling to be economically independent and autonomous while maintaining their distinctive cultural traditions. Each chapter in Endangered Peoples of Oceania: Struggles to Survive and Thrive is devoted to a specific people, including a cultural overview of their history, subsistence strategies, social and political organization, and religion and world view; threats to their survival; and their response to these threats. A section entitled Food for Thought poses questions that encourage a personal engagement with the experience of these peoples, and a resource guide suggests further reading and lists films and videos as well as pertinent organizations and web sites. As the curriculum expands to include more multicultural and indigenous peoples, this unique volume will be valuable to both students and teachers.
Author: Faye H. Christenberry
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810877457
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
This book is a research guide to the literatures of Australia and New Zealand. It contains references to many different types of resources, paying special attention to the unique challenges inherent in conducting research on the literatures of these two distinct but closely connected countries.
