Decolonial Memory and Nuclear Migration in Albert Wendt’s Black Rainbow

Albert Wendt’s Black Rainbow (1992) was published amidst a history of transnational nuclear proliferation, forced migration, and Indigenous resistance in the Pacific. This dystopian novel, set in Aotearoa (New Zealand), details an unnamed protagonist (whose memory has been erased by a surveillance state) who goes on a heroic quest and reclaims his identity. In this essay, I argue that Wendt’s use of Oceanic storytelling techniques in Black Rainbow, which are oral, intertextual, and ecologically based, privilege circular temporalities and retellings to promote a reclamatory relationship between memory and migration for archipelagic Oceanic connections.