Samoan artist and writer Sia Figiel has a new book out this year that tackles human stereotypes and taboos.
Sia was heavily influenced by the Somoan culture she grew up in and names her greatest inspiration as Samoan novelist and poet, Albert Wendt. She is best known for her earlier novels Where we Once Belonged and Girl in the Moon Circle.
Her latest novel tackles difficult subjects and attempts to dispel certain myths and stereotypes and, she says, only took her 6 weeks to write!
“Creating something out of love, it was very emotional. It took me six weeks writing this but I just had to present a different kind of Samoan man. Samoan men are not all violent, and not all lazy, and not all dumb and all these stereotypes.”
With strong adult themes, Publisher Island Press has warned that the book is perhaps the Samoan version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Let’s hope that doesn’t put anyone off!
“It is 1985 in Nu‘uolemanusa/Village of the Sacred Owl, Western Samoa. Madonna’s Like a Virgin rules the airwaves. Brilliant and inquisitive high school student and Star Trek fanatic, 17 ½ year old Inosia Alofafua Afatasi, is sent by her mother to the capital, Apia, to buy three giant white threads. While she waits at the bus-stop, Mr. Ioane Viliamu, her teacher of Science and Mathematics and recent graduate of the University of Papua New Guinea and the pastor’s eldest son, in turn, her spiritual brother, stops to offer her a ride in his red pick-up truck. Should she wait for the bus? Or should she accept the ride?”
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