Sista, Stanap Strong!: A Vanuatu Women's Anthology ed. by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen

This anthology of Vanuatu women's writing was curated to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Vanuatu's independence. It is a welcome gift. Launched in Vanuatu and New Zealand in June 2021, the book engages thirty-seven authors across several genres—poetry, short stories, memoirs, essays, songs—writing mainly in English, occasionally in Bislama, and uniquely in two Tannese languages. It straddles generations, from a twenty-year-old to an octogenarian. While most authors are ni-Vanuatu women, several have diverse ancestries, several live overseas, and several authors born overseas have made Vanuatu their home. Some had previously been published; some are published here for the first time.

The exquisite cover art by Juliette Pita, Victory Dance/Victri Danis, depicts an animated female coconut palm—her protuberant eyes, her expansive fronds, her fruits falling to fertile ground, where women pray, weave textiles, and generate new life. The back cover proclaims: "The writers in this anthology have chosen to harness the coloniser's language, English, for their own purposes. They are writing against racism, colonialism, misogyny and sexism. Writing across bloodlines and linguistic boundaries. Professing their love for ancestors, offspring and language."

There is much love in this volume—of place, of family, of men, of kastom (customs, ways of the place), and of the joys of everyday life. But there is also hurt and anger—about the wounds of colonialism, the loss of kastom and language, the harms of domestic violence, men's "use and abuse" of kava, and the exclusion of women from public positions, particularly in Parliament.

Early stories and poems reimagine the horrors of blackbirding—coercion and kidnapping, hard labor, and white overseers' violence in the plantations of Queensland—"the bitterness of sugar cane" (19–24). An exquisite poem by Frances C Koya Vaka'uta poignantly remembers a beautiful young girl from Pele Island, trafficked to be the wife of an Irish settler in Kadavu, Fiji. Her history is misted in archival uncertainties, but her genealogy is consummately restored, "pressing skin to bark" (27). Her name, Leiniaru, articulates her descent from coastal casuarinas. A later story by Nicole Colmar tells of another beautiful young girl, Josephine, barely thirteen, sailing from her beloved parents to share an "octagonal house" on east Santo with French settler Jean Mi. Although he paid her bride-price, she was his "daughter, lover, keeper, hostess, yet not quite wife, there being no children" (64). The estate later passed to a British settler, Teddy Hughes, and so did Josephine. Teddy and Josephine's descendants remember how the house, once the venue for grand parties during World War II, disintegrated to dust. Yet colonialism persists in novel forms—"they came, they saw they labelled" independent Vanuatu as a "fragile state," an "unfinished state," part of a wider "arc of instability" (176).

Most authors celebrate the attainment of independence in 1980. Yet Nellie Nipina Olul recalls her fear about the future after the tufala gavman (the dual government) of France and Britain departed (164). Mildred Sope rather recalls how she introduced the future leaders of the Vanua'aku Pati, Father Walter Lini and Barak Sope, while she and Barak were students at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. Mildred married Barak and helped establish the women's wing of the party.

Yet, in several poems and essays, the attainment of independence is characterized as freedom for men but not for women. Echoing earlier poetic provocations by the late Grace Mera Molisa, many authors lament that women are seen as "never never ready" (165). Mary Jack Kaviamu, a Tannese woman who wanted to stand for Parliament, documents the vilification she experienced from men and women alike and how husbands tried to coerce wives' voting choices (138–143). Kali Regenvanu suggests that representations of Vanuatu as a "paradise," or even as the happiest place on earth, conceal women's misery; she deplores the bone-chilling stories of women abused, raped, and murdered while men "sip the sweet nectar of power and carelessness" (152). Gross violations of women's human rights betray the promise of the national anthem: "yumi strong mo yumi fri / we are strong and we are free" (154). Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen's final poem concludes, "Hemi taem naoia" (It's now time) for critical thinking. "Happy birthday, Vanuatu. Now start acting like your [sic] 40" (177).

Many authors find strength in family and especially in being mothers—the joys of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and watching infants sleep contentedly (eg, 100–103). Several stories are animated by the wrench of girls leaving their parents, of poor mothers giving up babies for adoption, and of mothers separated from their children (19–24, 112–115). Shina Manmelin celebrates being a single mother, relishing her independence as she works to support her children (88–90). Roselyn Qwenako Tor laments how "the wedding ring became a noose" (46), while Elsie Nayal Molou, badly bruised, asks, "Is love supposed to hurt like this?" (110). Carol C Aru's story suggests how women can support each other when marital and economic traumas conjoin (156–160). Helen Lobanga Tamtam praises how her father worked hard drying copra so that she could be educated (55). Leina Isno shares a loving letter from Dunedin addressed to her late grandfather (77–83). Younger authors relish the beauty of their bodies and stylish clothes, even as they are diminished by the lustful gazes of men. "This body is mine," and women's bodies are "temples," even if men try to defile them, proclaims Molou (108–109). The staunch skills of survival, of getting up when pushed down, pervade much of the writing (eg, 57–58, 67–68, 93–95).

As the editors aver in their introduction, anthologies like Albert Wendt's early collection of poetry from the New Hebrides have been pivotal in the growth of Oceanic literature (14). Vanuatu's most renowned writer to date was Grace Mera Molisa. But, as her daughter Viran Molisa Trief insists in her fine foreword, "she was never the only one" (11). Grace encouraged many others to write through literary festivals and local publications.

Anna Naupa reflects that "the role of literature—especially in a predominantly illiterate society—is limited" (73). She wonders how many of her contemporaries and younger generations will read this book, as they now prefer using Facebook, the Internet, and popular songs to communicate. She criticizes pervasive narratives of "'us and them'—traditional versus modern, urban versus rural, black-and-white dichotomies—but this isn't the reality for many of us who span and cross these divides" (73). She celebrates the writing of Sia Figiel, of Teresia Teaiwa, and of Marcel Melthérorong (Mars Melto), whose novels in French trace his arc of selfdiscovery from Nouméa back home to Vanuatu. "We just need to be creative," Naupa proclaims, observing how literature "opens us to the nuances of everyday life, shedding light on others' experiences" (73).

This volume is an important step toward this creative opening. It is written for the most part in the colonizer's language, but here English is appropriated and localized to communicate the diverse experiences of Vanuatu's women. Poems in Bislama also appear in English translation, but the Bislama versions have a distinctive local resonance. Indeed, Sope prefers her poem "Chusum" in Bislama rather than English: "the meaning is deep down in you" (33). Despite being shunned and satirized by some (56), Bislama is an official language along side English and French and is the lingua franca for most people in the archipelago.

I congratulate all of the authors and especially the editors of this unique, innovative anthology. Despite delays in 2020 caused by the covid-19 pandemic, closed borders, and Super Cyclone Harold, they have, with the support of Creative New Zealand and Victoria University Press, produced a very impressive volume. In addition to the handsome hard copy and e-book, seven of the poets produced recordings of their work for the blog NZ Poetry Shelf.

Read, listen, savor.