By Aiko Yamashiro
Editor’s note:
Like Hawai‘i, French Polynesia suffered a period of colonial suppression, when indigenous languages and traditions were banned, discouraged, and commodified for outside consumption.
Similar to Hawaii’s cultural revival in the 1970s, poets, musicians, and creative artists led a cultural renaissance in the 1980s and 90s, using art to help reassert a proud Mā‘ohi identity to themselves and the rest of the world. There are large differences between our two regions however. For example, I was amazed to discover that up until a mere 10 years ago, France was still using parts of French Polynesia to test their nuclear bombs.
It will take much to overcome images of luxurious beaches and hip-shaking women. Vārua Tupu is just the latest example of writing back against a long history of stereotypes that reduce this variegated and complicated place into a simplistic and servile island paradise.
On October 5, 2006, Vārua Tupu writers Flora Devatine and Célestine Hitiura Vaite visited Professors Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri’s UHM English 371 Pacific Literature class to talk about their writing and experiences. The following piece contains excerpts from this discussion.
It was a gift to be in the presence of two women who have overcome much to make their voices heard. This is dedicated to them and their work.
ONE.
“To write, you do it from your life, from the people you’ve met, from the depth of your feelings and all the contradictions…without [necessarily] understanding all of it.”
—Flora Devatine
Flora in her cream and brown mu‘umu‘u steps out of the car and immediately embraces me with gentle aloha. This woman is one of the founders of Littérama‘ohi, the first French Polynesian literary journal, created in defiant response to French (men) claims that the Polynesian people had “no real literature.”
In addition to fighting outsiders’ disbelief, she has had to counter her own people’s lack of faith in their stories. Flora recounts the first time she ever spoke to a Tahitian orator in an attempt to preserve some of the oral traditions of her culture. He cautioned her as to the futility of her intended work. “Baby, [these stories are] just dry leaves. Only good for fire.” She responded with passion and certainty, “but I want these leaves.” He laughed and agreed to meet with her.
This was the beginning of a long career dedicated to empowering her people to speak their stories, write their stories for themselves. Flora herself first wrote in Tahitian [instead of French, which is the language most commonly associated with literacy] for a profoundly simple reason – so her mother could read it too.
She speaks of her sense of great responsibility for the older generation to transmit their knowledge to newer generations, because “they have to know from where they came.” Her energy has always been dedicated to the people who for reasons of history and injustice have been stripped of their voices. When she was younger, Flora chose to work not in a French university, but among people less privileged, somewhere where she could help “to say, from the floor, what’s inside us.”
In class, Flora stands quietly without extra movement. Her shoulders slope down and remind me of a mountain, strong and sure of itself. She gestures with her hands, using her fingers to physically pull the words out of her and mold the sounds into shapes we can understand. Her poetry runs so deeply in her that her words have beauty even in a language unfamiliar to her, each word a careful stone weighted with feeling, purpose, and the effort of expression.
AY: What do you feel is the importance of art in society?
FD: I think that…when I say that we write from our feelings, our life, from the good, the bad, the experiential…from the contradictions in our life…from our difficulties in our life, and also from our joys and depressions in our life. We write especially about the sad or the violence inside us. We try to do…to do something. First we have to cross…to pass away this feeling, this emotion with our doing. And it pass by the writing, by the sculpture, by the painting, by the music, by the arts.
TWO.
Celestine rushes out of the car like running electricity, laughing and talking. In jeans and a string of Tahitian pearls wrapped defiantly around her neck, she immediately captivates the class with her energy and animation. Célestine begins her talk to us by talking about her childhood. She grew up in a very poor part of Fa‘a, but as she describes it, this period in her life was filled with color and adventure filled with strong women. “I loved my neighborhood!” she exclaims.
She talks with deep affection and humor about her mother, who made a living as a professional cleaner. Despite books being a luxury item, her mother made it a point to make her children learn the importance of reading and writing. These two skills have helped Célestine feel empowered to tell her own story and her mother’s.
I will let her speak for herself.
In the Beginning:
Célestine: “And at eight, my godmother gave me my first book ever…and I thought, oh, I wanted so much a Barbie Doll…”[Listen]
All About My Mother:
Célestine talks about how writing helped her to reduce “The Electrician” to mincemeat. [Listen]
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EXCLUSIVE Ka Lamakua SOUND BYTE:
Despite being exhausted after a long morning of talking to a UHM English class, Célestine Hitiura Vaite and Flora Devatine take a moment to share with Ka Lamakua their advice for new writers. [Listen]
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