“‘I’ does not exist”: Developing Female Self with a Polynesian Family Community in Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel
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Samoa's first female writer Sia Figiel's first novel, Where We Once Belonged (1997), is a coming of age story about Alofa, a 13-year-old girl growing up in the village of Malaefou. Also, the novel elaborately narrates the various stories about Samoan people and, more precisely, about Samoan women in the family-based and male-dominated culture. Fictionalizing the historical and cultural reality in which Samoan women are forced to endure racial and gendered experiences, Figiel subtly problematizes the predefined concepts of female self and sexuality in a community-oriented society, while dealing with issues of gender and sexuality, history and culture, children and parents, self and others. Considering these points, this paper explores Where We Once Belonged in terms of Samoan women's voice and feminist consciousness in which the daughter-narrator who goes through childhood and adolescence comes to terms with her own search for personal and communal identity. As she tells the painful and humorous stories about Samoans with realistic touches and comical imagery, not only does Figiel attempt to overturn the romanticized Western view of the Pacific Islands as paradise and Western interpretations of Samoan life, but she also resists merely romanticizing the traditional Samoan culture.
Abstract
Samoa's first female writer Sia Figiel's first novel, Where We Once Belonged (1997), is a coming of age story about Alofa, a 13-year-old girl growing up in the village of Malaefou. Also, the novel elaborately narrates the various stories about Samoan people and, more precisely, about Samoan women in the family-based and male-dominated culture. Fictionalizing the historical and cultural reality in which Samoan women are forced to endure racial and gendered experiences, Figiel subtly problematizes the predefined concepts of female self and sexuality in a community-oriented society, while dealing with issues of gender and sexuality, history and culture, children and parents, self and others. Considering these points, this paper explores Where We Once Belonged in terms of Samoan women's voice and feminist consciousness in which the daughter-narrator who goes through childhood and adolescence comes to terms with her own search for personal and communal identity. As she tells the painful and humorous stories about Samoans with realistic touches and comical imagery, not only does Figiel attempt to overturn the romanticized Western view of the Pacific Islands as paradise and Western interpretations of Samoan life, but she also resists merely romanticizing the traditional Samoan culture.
참고문헌 (14)
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