Decolonizing cultures in the Pacific : reading history and trauma in contemporary fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Decolonizing cultures in the Pacific : reading history and trauma in contemporary fiction
(Routledge research in postcolonial literatures, 14)
Routledge, 2008, c2006
- : pbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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 deploy this violent history in their work. As Pacific peoples negotiate their paths towards sovereignty and chart their postcolonial futures, these writers play an invaluable role in invoking and commenting upon the various uses of the histories of colonial resistance, allowing themselves and their readers to imagine new futures by exorcising the past.
Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific is a valuable addition to the fields of Pacific and Postcolonial Studies and also contributes to struggles for cultural decolonization in Oceania: contemporary writers' critical engagement with colonialism and indigenous culture, Najita argues, provides a powerful tool for navigating a decolonized future.
Table of Contents
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
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