It's such a vibrant, colourful slice of Tahitian life you can almost smell the frangipani. So why is Materena praying to the Virgin Mary for the strength to resist throwing her daughter into the street?Ĭélestine Hitiura Vaite's irresistible novel is filled with wisdom, laughter, and two of the stubbornest women you will ever meet. Leilani is every bit as smart and inquisitive as Materena wanted her to be. But the traditional words of motherly wisdom aren't appropriate for Leilani, who is already smart enough to know that old wives' tales aren't true like the facts in her encyclopedias, and that science takes precedence over superstition. Materena Mahi has the perfect tree for her daughter, Leilani-a beautiful frangipani.įourteen years later, it's time for another ritual-Materena's "Welcome to Womanhood"speech. And after her baptism, a tree is planted in her name. After a new baby is introduced to her living relatives she is taken to the cemetery to meet the dead. To contextualize my research within a Mā‘ohi epistemology and reality, I use a methodology modelled after the tīfaifai, the French Polynesian quilt, and frame Vaite’s use of languages within the concepts of diaspora, Indigeneity, and colonialism.Tahitian life begins with Welcome into the World rituals. While Tahiti is still under colonial rule today, I explore how Vaite’s multilingualism linguistically brings down invisible barriers forged by waves of colonization across the Pacific, thus answering the call of theorist Epeli Hau‘ofa to rethink conceptualizations of Oceania in his foundational essay, “Our Sea of Islands” (1994), while also addressing the lack of scholarship on Mā‘ohi writers and their literary works. With colonial, global, Indigenous, and regional languages being woven together in these unique literary productions, Vaite’s multilingualism becomes an active medium of diasporic and Indigenous identity assertion. Set in 1970s colonial Tahiti, these novels ally several languages, including English, French, Tahitian and the Tahitian-French vernacular, giving the text rich multicultural flavors.
Between 20, Tahitian author Célestine Vaite, who now lives in Australia, published a series of novels in English, Breadfruit, Frangipani and Tiare in Bloom, all of which earned international acclaim.
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