[ANU Pacific.Institute] Fwd: Short commentary about Sia Figiel's Freelove and Samoa agency hijacked...

Tue Nov 28 17:09:19 AEDT 2023

Début du message réexpédié :

De: Serge TCHERKEZOFF <serge.tcherkezoff at gmail.com<mailto:serge.tcherkezoff at gmail.com>>
Objet: Short commentary about Sia Figiel Freelove and Samoa agency hijacked...
Date: 28 novembre 2023 à 19:02:47 UTC+13
À: Asaonet Listserv <ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU<mailto:ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>>, Louise Mataia Milo <l.mataia at nus.edu.ws<mailto:l.mataia at nus.edu.ws>>, "s.tauaa at nus.edu.ws<mailto:s.tauaa at nus.edu.ws>" <s.tauaa at nus.edu.ws<mailto:s.tauaa at nus.edu.ws>>, "s.vaai at nus.edu.ws<mailto:s.vaai at nus.edu.ws>" <s.vaai at nus.edu.ws<mailto:s.vaai at nus.edu.ws>>, asfs australian soc for French st <asfsexecutive at gmail.com<mailto:asfsexecutive at gmail.com>>
Cc: Sia Figiel <sia.figiel67 at gmail.com<mailto:sia.figiel67 at gmail.com>>

For whoever likes wandering among Pacific writers’ novels,  please find a short note about one of Sia Figiel’s interviews that I find essential for intercultural dialogue (see last paragraph below), about her Freelove that, after the publication in English, was one of the highlights of the 2020 Book fair in French Polynesia (the French translation launched in the Salon "Lire en Polynésie »: Freelove, par Sia Figiel, Papeete, Au Vent des Iles, 2020).

Rightly regarded as Samoa's foremost literary woman author since her first novel in 1996 (Where We Once Belonged), which was immediately awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize for the SEA+Pacific region, and after several other publications, Sia Figiel is acclaimed throughout the Pacific for giving a voice to women, particularly young women, who denounce and struggle in a world where their voices are too often overshadowed by those of men, in terms of social careers, family authority, and the prohibitions surrounding the expression of sexual desire, even the most banal and limited to heteronormativity (but - a little indiscretion with Sia's permission - expect writings, poems and short stories that will also, soon, speak of other worlds of desire). Beyond the question of female voices and male domination, Sia constantly seeks to make her readers aware of the dominance of 'mainstream' discourse, which claims to represent the identity of the community but does it to the detriment of individual expressions of identity, by removing from the visible stage the specific paths followed by this or that individual.

But there is another dimension of her work that has not been sufficiently noticed: the ironic criticism of the voyeuristic Western-masculine gaze that has been cast on Polynesian women for two centuries. For example, comments on her latest title, Freelove, published in English in 2017, and then recently in French under the same title thanks to Christian Robert's fine initiative in welcoming this novel to Au Vent des Îles (Papeete), wonderfully translated into French by Mireille VIgnol, have stuck to the first aspect. The trouble of mind and heart of a young student who discovers love. Certainly a first in local literature, and one to be applauded. But no one, outside Samoa at least, seems to have noticed that the author's choice of title should be taken with irony.

Indeed, saying 'free love' in a Samoan context inevitably brings to mind the two decades of debate about Samoa in Western (and partly Samoa) academia, the famous « Mead-Freeman debate » about whether or not traditional education accepted 'free love'.

It is worth listening to the author in an interview she gave locally in 2016 (22 February) to the Samoa Observer:
www.samoaobserver.ws/category/samoa/34166<http://www.samoaobserver.ws/category/samoa/34166>

[I quote here only few excerpts, the interview is much longer]

«  » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » »"
VT. How did you conceive Freelove, has this story been fermenting in your brain for a while or was it spontaneously born?

SF. The concept has been floating in my world of ideas for the last 25 years. Since my college days when a professor asked me after a discussion on Manifest Destiny and the US acquisition of Guam, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, Mead or Freeman? Who got it right? I hadn’t read either. But I felt uncomfortable at the sniggering among fellow students and their whisperings about ‘free love,’ which confused me.

I didn’t remember this particular Samoa and I remember not only becoming angered but offended that my home was known not because of something I or another Samoan had said, but because of what outsiders decided to say.

[…] I was writing. Took me 6 weeks to complete the first draft. I can’t explain it but it was an other-worldly experience that enveloped me, body and soul.

VT. Was the story autobiographical or based on a number of shared experiences from your teenage friends back in the day?

SF. I wish I could say it was. But it wasn’t. This is a work of fiction. One the muse brought to me on a silver pulu leaf, floating in the wind all the way from Samoa and my memory.

VT. You paint a picture of Samoa in the 1980’s that many of us knew well, do you think this Samoa still exists?

SF. Sadly, but no. The Samoa I write of is gone and exists only in my memory. The last time I was in Samoa was in 2012 and I felt like a stranger. I mean, the physical changes in themselves reflect the metaphysical changes, which are also tied to technology and the influx of new people and new ways of looking at the world.

VT. Do you think you have been brave and foolhardy writing such an intimate account of sexual awakening in a country where sexual matters are brushed under the falapapa?

SF. Brave? Hardly. There are women doing much braver things, like raising large families while working or fighting AIDS and diabetes and sexism in the workplace. Foolhardy? Hardly! I have conviction in what I write which goes all the way back to that college classroom 25 years ago. My work since has been to return the integrity of Samoan agency squarely to where it belongs which has been hijacked by cultural anthropologists, philandering artists and novelists and any other outsider who romanticises the experience of our humanity as Samoan and Pacific people.
That sexual matters are my forte should come as no surprise to anyone as that is the root of misrepresentation that has been perpetuated since the first French sailor got off the boat and decided to shoot the first Samoan at Massacre Bay. But that’s a whole other question about who writes history books. Which I suppose novelists do to a larger extend.
Freelove not only explores the agency of girls and women but it makes room for conversations that desperately need to take place regarding sexuality and the silences that continue to surround it despite the obviously problematic nature in which sexual crimes and violence against women continue to be handled in this country and throughout the Pacific Islands.

«  » «  » » » » » » » » » » » » » » »

[ST : my stress ; with the « French sailor and Massacre Bay », Sia Figiel evokes the arrival of La Pérouse en 1787 in Samoa, first ever visit by Europeans on Samoan land; for the circumstances that led to violence, on both sides, see S. Tcherkezoff, First Contacts in Polynesia, the Samoan Case, ANU Press 2008, free access:
https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/first-contacts-polynesia

Serge TCHERKEZOFF
serge.tcherkezoff at gmail.com<mailto:serge.tcherkezoff at gmail.com>

www.pacific-dialogues.fr/home.php<http://www.pacific-dialogues.fr/home.php>
www.pacific-encounters.fr<http://www.pacific-encounters.fr/>
https://www.pacific-credo.fr/index.php/fr/33-categorie-fr-fr/membres/serge-tcherkezoff/186-serge-tcherkezoff-publications

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