Competing Demands, Intertwined Narratives: Ethnic, Gender and National Identities in Alison Wong´s As the Earth Turns Silver

This article focuses on Alison Wong’s 2009 novel As the Earth Turns Silver, the first published by a New Zealand writer of Chinese descent, and considers the expectations and pressures placed on the author as a result of her ethnic background. As argued in the article, the “competing demands” affecting her as a novelist are solved by reconstructing Chinese New Zealand history as interrelated to the history of other New Zealanders. This is done, primarily, by fictionalising the interracial love story between the two protagonists, a Chinese man and a Pakeha woman, but also by contextualising their romance within a range of interrelated debates on ethnic, gender and national identity. Ultimately, Wong’s creative choices allow her to recover the silenced Chinese voice while exploring issues that were and continue to be of upmost importance for New Zealanders of all ethnic backgrounds.

Travesías literarias en el pacífico: de los mares del sur a la nueva Oceanía

This article is a brief introductory study of the anglophone literature from the South Pacific. Since the 1970s this writing has become consolidated according to the need of rejecting both the colonial visions and stereotypes applied to their population, as well as those related to their geographical location as islands in a remote and unknown ocean. The task of these writers has focused on the establishment of alternative postcolonial representations which are more in agreement with their cultural specificity both in their countries of origin and in their new diasporic locations. As a result, this emergent literature has managed to overcome the exotic connotations of labels like the South Seas or the neocolonial meaning of terms like the South Pacific and provide the bases for a holistic perception of a New Oceania, a vast area of cultural dominance in which each small island and the ocean which links them have become integral parts as their source of definition

The Dramatisation of Pacific Diaspora in Albert Wendt’s The Songmaker’s Chair

[Abstract] My paper looks at Albert Wendt’s play The Songmaker’s Chair (2004) as an example of the collective dramatisation of the experience of diaspora carried out by Pacific playwrights in New Zealand. Wendt’s play conforms to a conventional five-act structure but contains fragments of Samoan Fale aitu -a comic form employed as a weapon of social comment- as well as performative elements borrowed from stand-up comedy and hip hop. By combining western and Samoan dramatic forms, Wendt calls attention to the hybrid quality of Pacific identity in diaspora as well as to the range of multicultural elements available in contemporary New Zealand society

Reading (in) the Antipodes: New Zealand and Pacific Literatures in Spanish Translation

This article considers the Spanish translations of New Zealand and Pacific authors and explores the circumstances that have determined their arrival into the Spanish market as well as the different editorial and marketing choices employed to present these works to a Spanish readership. It considers the scarcity of canonical authors, the branding of Maori and other “ethnic” voices, the influence of film adaptations and literary prizes in the translation market, and the construction of the “New Zealand exotic” in works written by non-New Zealand authors which, in the absence of more translations from Spain’s literary Antipodes, have dominated the Spanish market in recent years

Casting Stones with Intent: Transnational Interventions towards Ethical and Reparative Memorialisation

In the summer of 2020, on the wave of the Black Lives Matter Movement, statues and public monuments became focal points of political struggle, perceived by many as symbolic reminders of pervading western imperial legacies. Yet, the debate over public memorialisation is far from new. Starting from the 2020 BLM protests in Britain and going back to previous campaigns, this article contextualises the toppling, effacing and removal of well-known statues of colonial agents in Britain, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and examines artistic interventions which appropriate, challenge and shatter static historical interpretations of imperial figures and events. Our contention is that these interventions constitute diverse forms of performative and re-storied resistance reflecting transnational demands for redress and reparation.This publication derives from the Teaching Innovation Project: “CultivARTE: Elaboración colaborativa de materiales didácticos multimedia en el aula de literatura y cultura” financed by IRIE, UIB. Reference PID222450

‘Rocking the Boat’: A conversation with New Zealand playwright, Lynda Chanwai-Earle

Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a New Zealand performance poet, playwright and scriptwriter of Eurasian descent. Born in London in 1965, she lived in Papua New Guinea for a number of years before moving to New Zealand as a teenager. She obtained a Bachelor degree at Elam School of Fine Arts, a Diploma in Drama from the University of Auckland and more recently an MA in scriptwriting from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters