what is Vanuatuan literature?

It seems easy to imagine: oral traditions, legends, songs, myths concerning the origin of the world... And then the writing introduced by the missionaries, the first decolonial ambitions, realised as late as 1980. This early written literature supposedly dates back to the 1960s as part of a larger Pacific Islander movement, concentrated at the University of South Pacific created in Fiji. The movement mostly led to the creation of short forms of expression, such as poems and tales. No wonder the book considered the first Vanuatuan novel has only 80 pages; it has been published in 2007 by Marcel Melthérorong under the title Tôghàn, which is also the name of its hero. In Camp Est in Nouméa (New Caledonia), a sort of regional prison or re-education camp, he has an opportunity to meet a lot of people belonging to diverse ethnic groups. So to speak, he is suspended between cultures, as well as between a past and a future, musing on the exact causes of his detention as much as whatever he might do after being released. He decides to return to Vanuatu to study the culture of his origin (the writer himself was born in New Caledonia in a family originating from Vanuatu, where he returns after the archipelago's independence).
One of the problems of the postcolonial society is the status of women, their economic rights, domestic violence, and the rest. No wonder the strongest poetical voice, at least among those who are audible on an international scale, was a woman rights activist, Grace Molisa (1946-2002), who wrote both in Bislama and in English, which gave her certain visibility in Australia. 

I have read

J.M.G. Le Clézio, Raga. Approche du continent invisible (2006)

Vertical Divider

I have written

... nothing ...

the island of many names

Raga is classified as a diary of a travel to Île de Pentecôte, on of the 83 islands forming the volcanic archipelago of Vanuatu. The book's initial sections present, so to speak, two overlapping spheres of exploration, one of the Western navigation that started with the Portuguese and the Spanish, and on the other hand, the much greater, even if lesser known adventure of the Melanesian people travelling in search of new lands of abundance, and without wars.
The encounter with the present-day Vanuatu is epitomized in the "beaten woman" who brought out of her oppressive marriage only to revive the tradition of weaving mats made from pandan (screw palm) and valorising them (thus valorising the women's work) in the local economy. 



J.M.G. Le Clézio, Raga : approche du continent invisible, Paris, Seuil, 2006.

Kraków, 2.08. 2021.