Albert Wendt and Pacific Literature: Circling the Void

Abstract

Since the 1970s a whole new breed of artists have appeared, telling the stories of Oceania from the inside. Albert Wendt is the leading writer and exponent of Pacific Literature. His work is consistently different in style, politically challenging, and ranges across essays, plays, poems, stories and novels, two of which have been filmed. This book is the first full-length study of Wendt's work. It places it in cultural and historical context, tracing archival sources of themes and key influences, and offers close readings of all the major texts. There is an introduction to Pacific Literature as a whole and to Wendt's Samoan background. Textual commentary relates each phase of production to key motifs from Polynesian culture and to movements of the time in New Zealand and abroad. There is an extensive bibliography of works by and about Wendt. Wendt's writing is positioned within key theoretical debates in postcolonial studies. This book argues that he makes a significant contribution to arguments over identity and indigenous agency from a determinedly non-metropolitan Pacific standpoint.

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