M y mother passed away from cancer when I was four years old. Grief-stricken, I still considered myself fortunate to have been raised in a Tongan household: my father, stepmother, paternal grandmother and paternal aunts all shared the responsibility of raising me and my seven siblings. This is normal in Tongan culture as we have no word for “aunt” or “grandmother” or “uncle” or “grandfather” or “cousin”; instead, each of them is a type of mother, father or sibling.
Drilled into the front door of the two-storey brick house we shared in Mt Druitt was the phrase “Fe’ofa’aki”. I grew up in the house of “Love one another”. It is a contradictory feeling being the first Tongan writer to have ever published a novel in Australia.
It’s a tremendous honour – but why the hell did it take so long for our mob to get here? Tongans, Sāmoans, Fijians, Māoris, Hawaiians, West Papuans, Tahitians, Solomon Islanders, Tokelauans, Ni-Vanuatu, Niueans, South Sea Islanders, and other island groups and nations that exist in the vast South Pacific Ocean are often referred to as “Pacific Islanders”. Writing is lonely work but connecting with other novelists on zoom keeps me motivated | Jodi Wilson Read more Instead of a colonial term which was coined and popularised in 1785, today most “Islanders” prefer to use the title “Pasifika” – created by government agencies in Aotearoa (New Zealand) to describe migrants from the Pacific regions and their desce.
