Pacific Islands Writing

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 Pakeha (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.

ISBN 0199276455   Pages 304 ISBN13 9780199276455 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 348 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Series title Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures Publication date 04 Oct 2007   Height (mm) 203 Library of Congress 2008353858   Width (mm) 135 DEWEY 820.99   Spine width (mm) 16 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate

List of maps and figures; Chronology of key events and publications; 1. Introduction: Voyaging Through the Pacific; 2. Europeans in the Pacific; 3. Warfare and Westernisation: Narratives of Conflict, Resistance, and Social Change; 4. The 1970s and Beyond: the Emergence of the New Pacific Literatures in English; 5. Orality, Textuality, and Memory: The Language of Pacific Literatures; 6. Conclusion: Pacific Diasporas

Pacific Islands Writing is a very handy guide to the subject and will be a key reference to, and promoter of, this still under-appreciated but large corner of postcolonial literary studies. Keown and series editor Elleke Boehmer should be congratulated and every library should have a copy. Paul Sharrad, Journal of New Zealand Literature

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