I’m a Pacific Islander of Indigenous Polynesian and Asian origins (Mā‘ohi, Pa‘umotu, Hakka) whose vision has been shaped by growing up in the diaspora, and I wish to honor the Indigenous Māori owners of the land on which I’m standing as I write this piece.
In her 2007 essay “To Island,” one of the greatest Pacific scholars and writers Teresia Teaiwa suggested we turn “island” into a verb: tap into our knowledge, and let it guide us and others. As islanders, we’re aware of the world’s limited resources and know how to be united across distance. “We are the Ocean,” stated Tongan-Fijian anthropologist Epeli Hau‘ofa to emphasize our commonality as Pacific peoples. Admittedly, this makes it both easy and difficult to assess Pacific Islander (PI) SFF: although we’re a sea of interconnected islands, we’re vastly different nations, and this essay can only be a general review of Pacific SFF literature.
Pacific literature is often labeled “new” or “emerging,” but these terms—as well as the idea that SFF is contemporary to the region—couldn’t be more wrong. Literature has existed in various shapes in our islands long before colonization, from oral storytelling to tattooing, with folklore and legends coloring it. Many people consider that fantasy elements and magic belong to the imaginary, but in the Pacific, these are often part of an Indigenous reality—that is, the ways in which we conceptualize our relationship with Nature and our ancestors. Deities, monsters, and spirits are not distant figures; they’re carriers of moral lessons with which we grow up. We don’t distinguish history from myths. Myths are our history.
However, the reality of PI SFF today isn’t reflective of the richness and breadth of stories in Oceania. There are very few SFF books by PI authors out there, and some regions are shamefully underrepresented. In the pool of marginalized literature, we’re at the bottom.
There are several factors worsening that phenomenon. The first is that our voices are overwritten. A simple Google search will show you that a lot of Pacific-based SFF stories aren’t, in fact, written by authors of PI descent. Some people spend a few years on a Pacific island and believe they’re the right person to respectfully write Indigenous mythology-inspired tales. This tradition of being written about goes way back, to colonial, settler times, and the sad news is it’s still going strong. All this does is silence us and turn us into stereotypes. In other words: please don’t.
Another factor is how traditional publishing is framed, within rigid Western literary conventions that rarely admit compromises, let alone for debut authors: narrative layouts in three or five acts; proactive heroes; goals centered on redemption and growth; strict rules on how to begin a novel or how much worldbuilding to do. Guidelines exist for a reason, but we must be careful about not killing the essence of our stories. As PI, we grow up with various types of stories and narrative forms, many of them influenced by Pacific values and/or Indigenous epistemologies (ways of being, thinking, and doing). We have to learn when to follow the rules, and when to break them.
Let’s consider one of the fathers of contemporary PI SFF, award-winner Māori author Witi Ihimaera. One of his most popular books, The Whale Rider, was adapted into an internationally successful film. This book opens with the Māori tale of the original whale rider rather than with the main protagonist, aka the focus of Western story structure. It can seem like Ihimaera prioritizes the lore, but instead he sets the conflict between ancient and contemporary times and builds up the context of cultural deconstruction within which his little heroine, Paikea, lives.
Let’s have a look at another successful author, Whiti Hereaka, whose writing was praised by Neil Gaiman in a recent tweet. Kurangaituku, Hereaka’s retelling of a Māori myth told from the perspective of the monster woman, won the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and is longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award. Kurangaituku is a masterpiece with an unconventional structure. Thanks to an ingenious format, the reader can flip the book and start reading backward. The physical middle of the book is, in the author’s words, where those who know the tale are used to seeing it begin. Its narrative structure tells its own non-linear story, a loop—beginning, middle, end, beginning—that honors a Māori conception of time and an Indigenous oratory mode.
The latest innovative addition to PI SFF is Indigenous writer Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall’s multiform, multi-genre speculative book, Tauhou (THWUP, 2022; House of Anansi, April 2023) that brings together in a postcolonial alternate reality the author’s two places of origins, Aotearoa and British Columbia.
Being mindful of our cultural heritage and making room for it in our writing entails that we think about how we position ourselves in the world. In the Pacific, community and solidarity are key, and notions of past and future blend together in our social environment. Therefore, writing a Pacific perspective may necessitate layering out the foundation of the hero’s life—his community—and allowing other characters’ stories to interweave with his. The link between these stories and the main plot may be lost on some readers, but it informs the protagonist’s journey. Good examples of this would be Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s Fantasy With Witches and Ho'oulumahiehie’s The Epic Tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele.
Our ways of telling stories aren’t always in contradiction with Western conventions. Having grown up with them, most of us are used to non-PI story structures. However, I argue that Pacific-ness translates in the details.
In the bestselling YA fantasy Telesā series by Samoan author Lani Wendt Young, the worldbuilding goes beyond what is usually done in YA fiction. Not only does it turn the island of Samoa into a character in its own right, but it also speaks of a connection to the land, which is vital for most PI. The first book of the series, The Covenant Keeper, has been marketed as “Twilight in the Pacific,” perhaps because, like Bella, the heroine moves back to her birth town. Non-PI readers may miss it, but it’s a “return home,” a recurring theme for islanders, especially those in the diaspora, and one they will relate to.
Whether visible or invisible to those unfamiliar with Pacific cultures, what makes our SFF novels ours should be celebrated. In an article, Tamsyn Muir states that Māori author Sascha Stronach’s The Dawnhounds “is part of a brave new generation that is sticking its middle fingers at the American SFF market.” Muir further notes that for Western readers it’s a chance to get “a taste of Kiwi-inflected science fiction, fantasy, and horror,” while Kiwis can appreciate the familiarity of Stronach’s universe.
These fictional “winks” to the Pacific aren’t just appreciated, they’re also powerful. Growing up without ever seeing people like us in books is a brutal kind of exclusion. Fortunately, publishing is slowly awakening and diversifying, especially in children’s SFF. Kids around the world can explore the Māori underworld and meet a mythical taniwha (Falling into Rarohenga by Steph Matuku), or fight a legendary Kanaka Māoli goddess (Lei and the Fire Goddess by Malia Maunakea; May 2023).
But our stories matter for other reasons than representation. In Fijian-Pākehā author Gina Cole’s Na Viro, a YA novel set in a dystopian Pacific where sea levels have risen and covered the lands, the protagonist Tia goes on an intergalactic rescue mission using Oceanic navigation knowledge. A work of Pasifikafuturism (a concept by Cole that sits alongside other Indigenous Futurism literatures), Na Viro’s ecocritical enterprise deconstructs colonialism and places ancestral knowledge front and center.
In a similar vein, Weird Fishes by Hawaiian-Portuguese storyteller Rae Mariz comments on the environmental challenges that threaten Pacific Islanders, and ultimately the rest of the world. With SFF being a chance to reshape reality and learn from it, PI have a lot to bring to the table. We were colonized, mythologized, and saw parts of our cultures sacrificed on the missionization altar. We experience racism, witness climate change every day, and are guardians of sustainable resources and knowledge. We have a lot to say.
In a conference in Wellington in December 2022, translator of French Pacific fiction and Associate Professor Jean Anderson evoked a well-known issue encountered by translators: how to render the Indigenous vision as faithfully as possible. Anderson warns against the harmful practices that keep marginalizing PI literature: deeming it a literature of the “periphery” (as opposed to an unreal Western “center”); or superposing one’s own writing rules and visions onto the PI text. The reader, like the translator, should approach the PI novel with the understanding that it’s informed by non-Western cultures and beliefs. It’s a way to let the text speak to you rather than try to have it fit your expectations.
Pacific Islander SFF writers: cultivate the little things that feel like “home” in your stories; embrace the oral myth that reminds you of your childhood and let it flow through your writing; let your characters and places have names that are familiar and matter to you; keep the words in your language that translating would weaken; find the balance between marketability and culture, and make room for your Oceanic roots.
Let’s “island” our writing, for We are the Ocean.
