Bitter Sweet
Indigenous Women in the Pacific

Edited by Alison Jones, Phyllis Herda and Tamasailau M. Suaalii

Key Points

• Pacific women’s views
• Unpicks complex issues surrounding women’s experience

In the West, the South Pacific has long represented the possibilities of a pure space, outside the ambivalences of the ‘developed’ world. But the indigenous women of the region often speak of the bitter sweetness of their experiences. Pacific women’s multiple engagements with work and with sovereignty politics, as well as their portrayals in film, poetry and tourism, are at the heart of this book. The contributors address the interesting, ongoing questions of representation and identity, as well as their place in the shifting politics of the contemporary Pacific.

In this volume, Maori, Samoan, Samoan/Tuvaluan, Palagi and Tongan authors ‘write down’ the complex, butter sweet politics of women’s lives and struggles in the Pacific.

Contents

Introduction
1 Images of Maori Women
2 In the Interests of Maori Women? Discourses of Reclamation
3 Education in Western Samoa: Reflections on my experiences
4 Learning Sexuality: Young Samoan women
5 Gender and Work in Fiji
6 Reconstructing the ‘Exotic’ Female Beauty of the Pacific Islands
7 Reflecting on the Pacific: Representations of the Pacific and Pacific Island Women in Five Dominant Cinematic Texts
8 Poems
9 Reclamation of Cultural Identity for Maori Women
10 Ancient Banyans, Flying Foxes and White Ginger: The Poetry of Pacific Island Women

Contributors

Jacqui Sutton Beets, D. Helene Connor, Te Kawehau Clea Hoskins, Jacqueline Leckie, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Tamasailau M. Suaalii, Lonise Tanielu, Konai Helu Thaman, AnneMarie Tupuola, Judith van Trigt.

Book Details

Gender studies, Pacific studies
ISBN 1 877133 87 6, 978 1 877133 87 9, paperback, 230 x 150 mm, 160 pages, illustrated, $39.95
Published: 2000

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