Femenino y plural: sub/versiones del paraíso en la poesía de Tusiata Avia.

Abstract

This paper focuses on Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004), the first poetry collection by Tusiata Avia, a New Zealand poet of Samoan descent, and concentrates on how the author revises and subverts colonial and patriarchal notions of paradise associated with the Pacific Islands and its women. First of all, I concentrate on how Avia rejects idealised and sexualised images of Polynesian women as inhabitants of a carefree paradise and presents us instead with characters affected by social exclusion and strict moral norms. On the other hand, I explore the concept of paradise in connection to the experience of migration from Samoa to New Zealand, idealised as a promised land, although these female characters are still affected by similar moral and social constrains. Finally, I consider how Avia manages to overcome these notions allowing her women to recreate their own personal paradise, defined on female and plural terms.