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VARUA TUPU: New Writing from French Polynesia | |
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Varua Tupu—the first anthology of its kind—offers English-speaking readers the stories, memoirs, poetry, photography, and paintings of a French Polynesian artistic community that has been growing in strength since the 1960s. In the literature and images of Varua Tupu, the people of this astonishing group of islands speak for themselves. The art includes work by such artists as Michel Chansin, Bobby Holcomb, Michel Ko, Claire Leimbach, and Marie-Helene Villierme. For more information on the work of Holcomb, please contact Dorothy Levy at dorotea7@mail.pf. Writers contributing works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and memoir include Louise Peltzer, Flora Devatine, Taaria Walker, Rai a Mai, Henri Hiro, Patrick Araia Amaru, Bruno Saura, John Lind, Celestine Hitiura Vaite, Titaua Peu, and Kareva Mateata-Allain. Translators include Nola Accili, Anne-Marie Coeroli-Green, Jean Toyama, and Mateata-Allain. For more information, please see the contributor notes. |
MANOA ISBN 10 Edited by |
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Message from the President of French Polynesia Varua Tupu is a welcome sign that the obstacles dividing Tahiti from the rest of Pasifika are rapidly being overcome. Even the barrier of language no longer need divide us from one another. We all belong to the Pacific, as brothers, sisters, and cousins, and it is significant that we are able to travel freely across the reef, physically and through the imaginations of our artists, and get to know one another again. The voices of indigenous people of French Polynesia can be heard for the first time in English in this volume, and our faces and Island way of life can be seen in the wonderful art. We hope projects such as this one will strengthen the goodwill and friendship that exist among Island people, and will bring us and our posterity closer together for many years to come. |
President Oscar Temaru |
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We knew something was going to happen. The omens are never wrong. The night before had been atrocious because of violent storms and rain. I don't remember ever having seen it so terrible. Each strike of lightning lit up the fare with a roar of thunder, revealing a family curled up and trembling in fear. What had we done? Why did the atua display their anger this way? As if our misery wasn't intense enough, near dawn the gods picked up the earth of Tahiti with fury and the ground shook. We greeted the dawn with huge relief, and the first rays of sun were like caresses. The sky was pure: Ra'a, the god of the wind, had tired from his exertions and calmed down. There were no traces of his huge upset of the night before, and it was as if we had all lived through a bad dream. But we could hear the faraway roar of the raging sea's enormous waves smashing the reef and proving to us that we hadn't been dreaming. Most of the fare had been damaged, so men and women got to work fixing them. It was at this time of intense preoccupation that we heard yelling. It sounded like an invitation to celebrate: "Pahi, pahi..." Children were the first to throng onto the beach. It took us a while to distinguish the top of the mast of the strange ship that sailed alongside the reef at a respectable distance. —from “Strange Ship” by Louise Peltzer |
Louise Peltzer |
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Mamie, I haven't forgotten your story. I have remembered the tattoo lady, whose hands danced the words from among the clouds from Heaven. Mamie, I will try, for you, —from “Tattoo” by Rai a Mai |
Rai a Mai |
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Ho mai na means giving everything, the way a mother gives everything she possesses to her son. The mother gives, and when she has given everything possible, the son can go on from there. He will always have his mother near him; his mother connects him to the source of everything: his roots, his blood, his ancestral lineage...The child is made whole because of these connections and can proceed. The mother is the symbol of the direct link, the parental link; the land is the mother. That genealogical linkage is the umbilical cord, the pu fenua, the placenta. —from “The Source: An Interview with Henri Hiro” |
Henri Hiro |
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Memory returns to me, surprises me with the curve of a word, of an image, of a smell, of a route. Noise of water, undertow of fear, Memory rising without warning submerges me. But then it soars high in the sky, like the hours of twilight; letting it fly, I internalize these reclaimed memories! Memory knows that I track it in the dark hours of stormy days and rising tides. —from “Memory” by Flora Devataine |
Flora Devatine |
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Materena gets busy digging mussels. She sits in the knee-deep water and digs her fingers into the sand. She always gets a mussel, but she only takes enough to fill up the bucket. And it happens that Materena feels the presence of the people who used to dig mussels there, the people way before her time: her ancestors and their friends. They're sitting in a circle, and they talk and they laugh, all the while digging mussels. Since discovering it, Materena had hoped to be digging mussels at that special place for years to come. But a gendarme paid her a visit in his police car. —from “Breadfruit” by Celestine Hitiura Vaite |
Celestine Hitiura Vaite |
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