Awareness, authenticity, in writings

writings of Solomons women

Mi Mere Poetry and Prose by Solomon Islands Women Writers. Edited by Afu Billy, Hazel Lulei and Ju//y Sipolo.

Published by the University of the South Pacific Solomon Is lands Centre, Honiara, 1983. 137 p. No ISBN or price provided.

“The writers of several works in this book choose to remain anonymous because of the very real constraints on freedom of expression by women which still exist in Solomon Islands societies. ”

This brief editorial note, to gether with an almost equally brief introduction sets the scene for a powerful collection of over 50 poems and stories (many based on fact) by Solomon Islands women writers. The work was largely the result of two women writers’ workshops held at the USP Solomon Is lands Centre in 1980. The editors hope that it will “give other women the courage to put down their ideas and ex periences on paper”, and their hope is that further anthologies will result. We also hope this will be realised, for Mi Mere is truly a “thought-provoking and revealing” book.

Mi Mere is divided into six parts: Edukesin an Sens, Olketa Man, Ting Ting Back, Stori, Woman and Olketa Mere. In each ease there is a section introduction of a page or so.

Forty-three photographs (in cluding one of the contributors with Marjorie Tuainekore Cro combe who I believe partici pated in the 1980 workshops) give us a strong visual sense of the setting for much of this work, and what many of the characters might look like. This is especially so as many of the authors feature as characters in their own work. I was very moved by Sue Fleming’s photographs, in particular. Part six, Olketa Mere, is a bit of a departure. After reminding us that Mi Mere “is a result of women who have had the courage to express themselves on paper”, the editors wonder if we “may be wondering about

the kind of women who wrote these tales”. As, indeed, we have. Five profiles of women follow, “not necessarily those of the . . . authors, but women picked at random . . . Some have written their own profile; others cannot.” So many anthologies end with a scram ble of brief contributors’ notes.

In closing as it does with these sensitive profiles Mi Mere leaves us with a far stronger sense of the lives of the women in volved.

An anthology of the seen and not heard Mi Mere sets out in a quietly determined way to change that. Carole Ferrier, in “Notes towards a feminist liter ary criticism” ( Hecate, January 1976) listed a number of ques tions we might ask of women’s writing which were originally formulated by Cheri Register.

As Register asserts, “Feminist criticism is ultimately cultural criticism,” and no reader of Mi Mere can avoid questioning some aspects of Solomon Is lands life after reading these writers’ stories and poems though I’m not sure that all contributors would be comfort able around words like “femin ist”, or phrases like “cultural criticism”.

But take a story like Mary

Raike’s “Early Experience”.

“One day I was very, very sick with a high fever. In the past if you had fever you were not allowed to drink water . . . one day when everybody was away, I cried for water. . . and my sister offered me a bamboo of water. I drank the lot. After this I calmed down a little and had some sleep. When the people returned from the gar den my aunt wanted to drink.

But there was no water. This made her very angry. She beat my sister for giving me water, and then made a big fire with coconut shells. When it was smoking heavily, she dragged me out of bed, tied my legs together and hung me upside down over the smoking fire. I remember her dragging me out of bed, but I can’t remember much about when I was han ging over the fire . . . When the aunt left us my sister took a knife, cut the string binding me and dragged me away from the fire.”

This autobiographical story by the matron of King George VI School about her experi ences at the age of six or seven concerns the time when their widowed mother was married off by her brothers to a man in another village. Her daughters

were taken in by an aunt and it was only after the experience described above that they ran away, and were finally renu nited with their mother. If that’s not implicit criticism of a cultural practice then I’m not sure what is. The editors warn us that the story tells us “of how women not so long ago were ruled by custom”, but this note of intro duction is ironically placed op posite a picture of a Honiara Brownies Christmas Party taken in 1963, and few readers would be ready to believe that customs of this kind are entirely confined to the recent past.

Register first asks us to con sider whether a work portrays authentic female experience. Mi Mere is at pains to point out that much of its contents are “true” rather than “made up”. While there are a number of imagina tive pieces, most of the stories appear to be autobiographical.

But even the imaginative pieces are clearly rooted in reality. Afu Billy’s story “Against My Will” features a teenage girl who goes to a dance hall with her boy friend after her parents have warned her not to. Her parents had told her; “Western style dancing was not only sinful and against their religion, but dan cing with boys was not the traditional way for a young girl to behave. ” When she is caught by her big brother and cousins (who as males are presumably allowed to go to dances) she is punched, taken home, and her hair is cut off to stop her going

Honiara Brownies Xmas party. S.I. Information Service 1963.

out again. In the conflict of “village” and “town” values in a changing society it is the woman in the story who is seen to suffer both physical and psychological violence.

Register next asks does the portrayal of women’s sexuality relate to actuality? Section two, Olketa Man, again brings us back to actual experiences. The editors comment: “The stories are revealing and hold nothing back. Except for changes of characters’ names in some cases, this work comes from the bared souls of women who have dared to speak the truth”.

The story “Dad” examines “the times when my father used to ill-treat my poor mum”. She tells us of the time her father knifed her mother and went to prison, of his drinking and how: “On one occasion he strangled her, but luckily Mark and I were awake. So, screaming, tears running from our eyes, we pounced on Dad and loosened his hands.” The story has a poignant conclusion: “But one surprising thing about him: he is retired now and is back at home. Although he drinks at times, he’s changed. He has

never again beaten Mum up. I thank God for that. They’re both happy together now, get ting older every day.” And a poem, “My Husband” includes the lines: You’re not satisfied You beat me ill treat me There are days in our life When not a word is spoken Do women find their own experience mirrored in the liter ature they read or society’s idea of how “female culture” should be, next asks Register? I am a teacher in New Zealand schools and we are going through a difficult period as the Depart ment of Education is making a real attempt to change the kinds of models of female behavior shown in textbooks. They are thwarted by an economic situa tion which keeps an outdated generation of sexist textooks in our classrooms. It costs money to change, and the economic priorities are seen to lie else where. Seen by whom being a not unrelated question. Mi Mere is a first anthology by women in anew literature and maybe its presence in Solomon Islands will give it an impact which an

anthology like Private Gardens: An Anthology of New Zealand Women Poets (1977) could never hope to have. In larger literatures it is hard to see how Register’s question could be quickly answered.

Finally there is the problem (as Register sets it) of combin ing an accurate reflection of women’s lives with positive, new role models. The editors of Mi Mere are aware of this.

“Change,” they tell us, “seems to be inevitable. As more women go to school they leam new ideas,” but, “changes brought about by education are not always to our benefit. ” The women writers in this anthology seem to be telling us that Solomon Islands women will need to create their own new models for themselves and not leave it up to a largely Western education system or to the present patriarchy. The final photograph in the collection is of Lily Poznanski, “who was the first, and so far the only, woman politician” in Solomon Islands. One of the concluding portraits of women, for inst ance, is of Alice Ture. She is a 50-year-old mother of 10 chil den who lives in Hopongo village. She entered a mission school when she was 17 and left at Standard Two. She has a daughter at King George VI School and another at Honiara Technical College. She does not agree with arranged mar riages, and has allowed one daughter to marry a man of her own choice.

Alice Ture recently attended a workshop in Honiara on the Promotion and Training of Women in Income-raising Acti vities organised by the Women’s Training Centre of the Ministry of Youth and Cultural Affairs. She herself has opened a bank account in the nearby market centre of Munda and now has her own market gardening business. It is in characters like Alice Ture both real and imagined that Mi Mere holds up a promise of a new kind of future for women in the Solomon Islands. Rarely has an anthology of women’s writing so clearly fulfilled the principles of feminist literature.

Its consciousness and au thenticity must leave any reader with a deep respect for women’s writing in Solomon Islands.

I do not know pre-European Solomon Islands literature well. 1 am more familiar with that of the Maori, but I know that Pacific literatures held much in common. In his introduction to Nga Moteatea (Part II) Apirana Ngata makes much of the fact that women as a group pre dominated as composers of Maori oral literature. From one canoe area to another this was true and he cites the case of Ngati Porou who count among their women composers Hine ki-tawhiti, Hine-wahi-rangi, Rangi-apakura, Te Rangipaia, Wharerakau, Tangikuku, Hine kaukia, Turi-whewhe, Hine-ta whi-rangi, Paiatehau, Hineki mua and others. Was it not so before the Europeans came to Solomons Islands? In Mi Mere I suspect that women writers re turn us to that tradition, a tradition we can only be glad

they have restored.

D. S.

Long.