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Bilinguals’ creativity: Patricia Grace and Maori cultural context
Author(s) -
Tawake Sandra
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/1467-971x.00271
Subject(s) - colonialism , narrative , creativity , pacific islanders , standard english , context (archaeology) , indigenous , history , creative writing , sociology , literature , linguistics , anthropology , ethnic group , art , psychology , philosophy , social psychology , ecology , archaeology , biology
Fiction written by Pacific islanders began to emerge on the literary scene about 1970 and began to overwrite the perspectives and stereotypes that had characterized colonial narratives set in the Pacific written prior to that time. Pacific island writers adapted the Standard English code to create a new English with which to express their own cultures and identities in a language and a point of view different than those used by their colonizers. This writing adapts the Standard English code by incorporating such elements as untranslated vocabulary from indigenous languages and discourse elements from a pre–colonial oral tradition that include repetition, eulogy, and oratory. Important works of fiction by NZ Maori Patricia Grace – Cousins (1992) and Baby No–Eyes (1998) – exploit her innovations in language and the narrative structures of Standard English in order to tell her stories in the way that the older Maori people had of telling a story, a way where the beginning is not the beginning and the end is not the end. Grace celebrates difference and contests essentializing identities and social constructions of reality by creating powerful images of post–coloniality. Her work stands among the best fiction coming out of the Pacific for its power to transform one instrument of colonial domination into an instrument of creativity and liberation.