A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Much of the region’s writing can be interpreted as mixing these modes. 159 What unites the
writers – and their Hawaiian counterparts – is their quest for what is lost; paradise,
childhood, the past, one’s homeland, innocence, meaning, love: As Wendt aptly put it:
“In our various groping ways, we are all in search of that heaven, the Hawaiki, where our
hearts will find meaning; most of us never do find it, or, at the moment of finding it, fail
to recognise it.” 160
Another huge obstacle for pan-Pacific ideas to take hold is the pervasiveness of
jingoistic nationalisms throughout the region, its worst instance having been the Fijian
military coups in 1987, with repercussions that Indo-Fijians still have to struggle with
today. Raymond Pillai expresses his frustration with the negative image of Indians in Fiji
in harsh terms in his poem “Labourer’s Lament:”
We do not wear upon our sleeve
That damaging star of shame.
But need we symbols to believe
We’re Jews in all but name. 161
Indo-Fijians form the only larger immigrant community in the region, and comprise a
relatively high number of writers. Instead of drawing on indigenous oral traditions, these
authors are influenced by Indian fables and folktales. As immigrants often experience
rootlessness, they either develop a greater need to cling to their homeland’s traditions or
an assimilatory urge to establish a bond to their new home, depending on the immigrants’
generation. This will surface in their writings, much as it does for example in the AJA’s
texts from Hawai’i. 162 Especially indentured laborers have often been lured with a
‘promised land’ only to be disappointed, being left with another paradise lost.
159 Other important South Pacific writers are the Indo-Fijian poet Sudesh Mishra, novelist and poet Satendra
Nandan, and critic and short fiction writer Subramani himself, the playwrights Pio Manoa from Fiji and
Vilsoni Hereniko from Rotuma, the Papuan satirist Epeli Hau’ofa, the Cook Islands novelist and Prime
Minister Sir Tom Davis, the Niue/New Zealand artist, poet and novelist John Pule, and the poets Momoe
Malietoa von Reiche from Samoa and Konai Helu Thaman from Tonga. Please refer to the mentioned
anthologies for samples of their works and to Subramani’s study for a first assessment.
160 Albert Wendt, “Towards a New Oceania,” Mana Review 1 No.1 (January 1976): 49; quoted in
Subramani 1992: 94.
161 Quoted in Subramani 1992: 87, no reference. Subramani lists what is being held against Indians: their
economic shrewdness, their number of children, their being given to excesses, and other prejudices. In the
same context, Vijay Mishra adds: “There have been the Micheners forever in search of scapegoats, forever
accusing and confusing” (quoted ibid.).
162 AJA is the common abbreviation for Americans of Japanese ancestry.
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