Pua and daffodils: Weaving the ula in postcolonial Oceania

In: Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, Band 4, Heft 1, S. 5-17

Abstract

Abstract
Samoan is my mother tongue. It is the language of my thoughts. My intellect. My heart. My imagination. Before my high school English teacher Sr Vitolio Mo'a, a Catholic nun and respected Samoan academic, introduced me to Wordsworth and his 'host of golden daffodils' in an English countryside, far, far away from the warm waves of mama Moana (the ocean), I was singing, dancing, weaving, sewing; shells, pua, leaves, poems, stories, songs; connecting one to another and another to form a long ula (a necklace of flowers and leaves) under the old pulu tree where I was born and raised in the village of Matautu tai, Western Samoa, the centre of the Universe as I knew it. In this article, I will discuss in depth how my initial introduction to an English flower not only challenged me and my perception of the world but how it radically changed the way I imagined the world, as a Samoan woman and as a writer.