Kunapipi Kunapipi

Volume 27 Issue 2 Article 2

2005

Kunapipi 27 (2) 2005, Contents, Editorial Kunapipi 27 (2) 2005, Contents, Editorial

Anne Collett

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Kunapipi 27 (2) 2005, Contents, Editorial Kunapipi 27 (2) 2005, Contents, Editorial

Abstract Abstract Contents, Editorial

This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol27/iss2/2

KUNAPIPIJournal of Postcolonial Writing

VOLUME XXVII NUMBER 22005

Kunapipi is a bi-annual arts magazine with special but not exclusive emphasis onthe new literatures written in English. It aims to fulfil the requirements T.S. Eliotbelieved a journal should have: to introduce the work of new or little knownwriters of talent, to provide critical evaluation of the work of living authors, bothfamous and unknown, and to be truly international. It publishes creative materialand criticism. Articles and reviews on related historical and sociological topicsplus film will also be included as well as graphics and photographs.

The editor invites creative and scholarly contributions. The editorial boarddoes not necessarily endorse any political views expressed by its contributors.Manuscripts should be double-spaced with notes gathered at the end, and shouldconform to the Harvard (author-date) system. Wherever possible the submissionshould be on disc (soft-ware preferably Microsoft Word) and should beaccompanied by a hard copy. Please include a short biography, address and emailcontact if available.

Kunapipi is an internationally refereed journal of postcolonial literatureformally acknowledged by the Australian National Library. Work published inKunapipi is cited in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature’s AnnualBibliography (UK), The Year’s Work in English Studies (UK), The AmericanJournal of African Studies (USA), The Grahamstown Information Journal (SA),Australian Literary Studies, The Indian Association for Commonwealth Studies(India), The New Straits Times (Indonesia), The Australian Public AffairsInformation Service (produced by the National Library of Australia) and the MLA.All correspondence (manuscripts, inquiries, subscriptions) should be sent to:Dr. Anne CollettEditor — KUNAPIPIEnglish Literatures ProgramUniversity of WollongongWollongong NSW 2522AustraliaSUBSCRIPTON RATESIndividual: 1 year AUD $60.00Institutions: 1 year AUD $130.00Please note that if payment is made in currencies other than AUD$, the equivalentof $10.00 must be added to cover banking costs. Cheques should be made payableto Kunapipi Publishing.Internet: http://www.kunapipi.comCopyright © remains with the individual authors.This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of privatestudy, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no partmay be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be made to theeditor.

ISSN 0106-5734

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Kunapipi

VOLUME XXVII NUMBER 2

EditorANNE COLLETT

Sub-EditorGREG RATCLIFFE

Editorial AdvisorsDIANA BRYDON, LEE THUAN CHYE, DIANA WOOD CONROY, MARGARETDAYMOND, HELEN GILBERT, GARETH GRIFFITHS, ALAMGIR HASHMI,ARITHA VAN HERK, JANIS JEFFRIES, ALAN LAWSON, RUSSELLMCDOUGALL, HENA MAES-JELINEK, GANESH MISHRA, ALASTAIRNIVEN, KIRSTEN HOLST PERTERSEN, CHRIS PRENTICE, BRUCE CLUNIESROSS, PAUL SHARRAD, KIRPAL SINGH, ANGELA SMITH, HELEN TIFFIN,GERRY TURCOTTE, JAMES WIELAND, MARK WILLIAMS

ProductionGREG RATCLIFFE

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Five Year SubscriptionsTribute to AnnaSonja Bahn Isabel CarreraJeanne Delbaere Helen GilbertZeny Giles Gareth GriffithsBernard Hickey Dorothy JonesPaul Love Russell McDougallHena Maes-Jelinek Jamie ScottPaul Sharrad Jennifer StraussChris Tiffin Helen TiffinAdi Wimmer

AcknowledgementsKunapipi is published with assistance from the Association for CommonwealthLiterature and Language Studies and the European branch of the Associationand the Facuty of Arts University of Wollongong.

EACLALSWe wish to thank: Text Publishing for permission to print the extract fromCélestine Hitiura Vaite’s forthcoming novel, Tiare: The Husband Who Didn’tDeserve His Wife and Everything That Happened After That; Éditions Grain deSable for permission to reproduce Isabelle Goulou’s illustrations from L’enfantKaori; Deborah Carlyon and University of Queensland Press for permission toreproduce the drawings from MamaKuma; Biliso Osake for permission toreproduce his cartoon; Ani O’Neill, Niki Hastings-McFall, Filip Tohu, JohnPule, Fata Feu’u for permission to reproduce images of their work; and EricAubry for permission to reproduce the photograph of Déwé Gorodé.

Front Cover: Dancers in the Kaul 1 SingSing Group from Karkar Island, Madangdistrict, PNG, wearing bilum typical of this region as part of their dance constumeperformance at the Goroka Show, 1994. (Photograph: Susan Cochrane)

Kunapipi refers to the Australian Aboriginal myth of the Rainbow Serpent whichis the symbol of both creativity and regeneration. The journal’s emblem is to befound on an Aboriginal shield from the Roper River area of the Northern Territoryof Australia.

European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies

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ContentsEditorial, Anne Collett vii

ESSAYSDominique Jouve, Lia Bryant,Judith Gill & Deidre Tedmanson, 9

“If I Don’t Speak to My Child in My Own Language,Then Who Will?” Kanak Women Writing Culture for Children’

Raylene Ramsay, ‘Déwé Gorodé: The Paradoxes of Being a Kanak 23Woman Writer’

Stéphanie Vigier & Raylene Ramsay, ‘Women Writers in New Caledonia’ 43Karen Stevenson, ‘Threads of the Island, Threads of the Urban’ 63Shayne Kearney, ‘The Power of the Pen: Solomon Islands Women Uniting 77

to Overcome Adversity through Writing’Linda Crowl, ‘Carrying the Bag: Women Writers and Publishers in 92

the Pacific Islands’Susan Cochrane, ‘Bilong Ol Meri (For All Women): The New Guinea 107

Bilum’Steven Winduo, ‘Papua New Guinea Women Finding Paths through 131

Limitation’Holly Walker, ‘Developing Difference: Attitudes towards Maori 215

“Development” in Patricia Grace’s, Potiki and Dogside Story’Jo Diamond, ‘He Korari PuaWai: Postcolonial Raranga in Aotearoa 231

New Zealand and Australia’Daphne Lawless, ‘“Craving for the Dirty Pah”: Half-Caste Heroines in 240

Late Colonial New Zealand Novels’Sarah Ailwood, ‘Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Tensions of 255

Empire during the Modernist Period’Jen Crawford, ‘Spaze: Void States and the Mother-Child Relationship in 268

The Matriarch, The Dream Swimmer, Cousins and Baby No-Eyes’

BIBLIOGRAPHYStéphanie Vigier, ‘Women Writers in New Caledonia’ 53

FICTIONJane Downing, ‘The Tradition of Weaving’ 58Mathilda Parau, ‘To Lean On’ 135Anne Mathew, ‘Gara’ 139Helen Setu, ‘A Test of Fate’ 143Michelle Kopi, ‘Mother’s Child’ 150Célestine Hitiura Vaite, ‘Pito’s Congratulation’ 197Lani Young, ‘Don’t Tell’ 251

‘Stillborn’ 276

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POETRYLeah Moide, ‘Our Past’ 174Melissa Aigilo, ‘Moral Intents’, ‘Kitchen Duty’ 175Cresantia Frances Koya, ‘The Mothers of Wisdom’, ‘Untitled’, 201

‘Free Fall in Love’, ‘Fools’ Gold’Briar Wood, ‘Sea Wall’, ‘Kirikau’ 213Konai Helu Thaman, ‘A Celebration of Peace’, ‘The Way Ahead’ 281

INTERVIEWAnne Collett, ‘“Why not a Woman!”: An Interview with Tahitian Writer, 177

Célestine Hitiura Vaite’

REVIEW ESSAYSEdward P. Wolfers, ‘Award-Winning Account of a Pioneering Papua New 119

Guinean Woman’s Life on the Frontiers of Change:MamaKuma by Deborah Carlyon’‘Pacific Women and Peace: Bougainville’s “Mothers of the Land”’ 156

Paul Sharrad, ‘Re-viewing Reviewing: Thoughts on Pacific Poetry 206 and Hybridity’

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 284

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EDITORIAL

Not long ago I was asked to write one of those ‘history of the world in a thousandwords’ entries for an encyclopaedia. In this particular case it was a ‘history ofwomen in the South Pacific’ in two thousand words — a request that I declinedat first, feeling that my qualifications were decidedly inadequate: I was a woman,I was an Australian, and I had published in the area of postcolonial women’swriting. When pushed hard enough however, I reluctantly agreed and embarkedon an intensive research project whose outcome was not only the potted history,but also the discovery that information was scant and scattered, library holdingswere generally pretty limited, and the most important sources were often peoplewho knew people who could tell me this and lend me that. The exercise left mefeeling frustrated but also stimulated: I wanted to know more.

This special issue of Kunapipi is a very small part of that ‘more’. It has beena long (a covert apology for publication delay) and a fruitful (an overtcongratulation to those who contributed) project. The ‘South Pacific’ is a loseterm, chosen for convenience rather than anything more sophisticated (LindaCrowl’s essay includes an informative discussion of the term). For me as editor(with the not very postcolonial strains of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical inmy head — ‘Bali Ha’i’ and ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ battling for supremacy) itserved to limit the field (or rather ocean), with an emphasis on small island cultures(and hence the absence of Australia). After much searching, inquiring, pleadingand harassing, I received contributions from and about, New Caledonia, SolomonIslands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tahiti, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Cook Islands,Tonga and Samoa. The issue grew beyond anything I had envisaged, and I wouldlike particularly to thank Paul Sharrad for his knowledge and guidance — where tolook, who to ask…. At one point I recall his suggestion to contact Konai HeluThaman, to which I replied ‘Who?’. An eminent poet and scholar, her poems ‘ACelebration of Peace’ and ‘The Way Ahead’ bring the issue to a close with thepromise or at least the possibility of a green future and the prospect of peace. Itmay be that this is wishful thinking, but if we have no vision of peace then wecannot work toward it.

There are two dominant strands that bind the various contributions of thisissue together, and they are the old familiars: the forces of destruction and creation.‘Day after Day’, writes Déwé Gorodé,

We will try toglue back together the broken pieces of our dashed hopesreform the slaughtered images of our strangled speechrediscover the unity of the scattered wordthrown to the four winds of solitude bythe gunpowder of violence…

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day after daysecond after secondlike the river hollowing out its bedthe ant counting her deadthe foam marking the shorerecreate the ritual phrase that unmasks treacheryreinvent the magical dance that ensures victory

(qtd Ramsay 33)

This is the violent history of colonialism, but it is also the violent history ofpatriarchy: women’s poems and stories speak out against the silence of the forcedmarriage, the battered wife, the raped daughter, the murdered unmarried mother.But as much as I am repeatedly shocked by the stories that speak of violencedone to women, I am endlessly surprised by the testimonies to women’s strength,endurance and creativity. Weaving is a theme that runs throughout the issue, notonly in the material cultures of bilum, jaki, lei, and raranga, but also in theverbal cultures of traditional speaking and contemporary writing:

… the women gatherTo thread dreams

Words and silencesInto stories and stones

Of love

That will sing(Cresantia Frances Koya, ‘The Mothers of Wisdom’ 201)

Anne Collett