1st Edition
Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific Reading History and Trauma in Contemporary Fiction
By Susan Y. Najita
Copyright 2007
254 Pages
by
Routledge
256 Pages
1 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
256 Pages
1 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
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In Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific , Susan Y. Najita proposes that the traumatic history of contact and colonization has become a crucial means by which indigenous peoples of Oceania are reclaiming their cultures, languages, ways of knowing, and political independence. In particular, she examines how contemporary writers from Hawai‘i, Samoa, and Aotearoa/New Zealand remember, re-tell, and... Read more
Introduction: toward a decolonizing reading praxis, 1 Trauma and the construction of race in John Dominis Holt’s Waimea Summer 2 Recounting the past, telling new futures: Albert Wendt’s Leaves of the Banyan Tree and the “tropical” cure 3 “Fostering” a new vision of Maori community: trauma, history,and genealogy in Keri Hulme’s Th e Bone People 4 “Talking in circles”: disrupting the logic of property in Gary Pak’s The Watcher of Waipuna 5 Making Pakeha history: familial resemblances in Jane Campion’s The Piano, Epilogue
Biography
Susan Y. Najita is an Assistant Professor in English and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies in the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
