Sia Figiel

This is a coming of age memoir written by a Samoan woman about Alofa, a teenager in her transformative years in the village of Malaefou. The narrative is completely unique and its refreshing to see an original voice and style in the literary world. The book is non-linear and infused with the Samoan language which can be off putting to some readers. I was fine with allowing myself to just read the words without meaning because maybe some things are meant to not be understood by palagi (we have never had to live it so how could we fully understand anyways). There is a small translation section in the back for important words but she does a great job of telling the story that I eventually stopped looking and just enjoyed a look into a different style of storytelling. There are a few breaks in the narrative that tell stories of the Gods before Jesus came to the island. It's through these stories that I found the poetic nature of the novel to be reflection of traditional story telling in Samoa. Its sad to see how colonization has hurt these traditions. We cant change history but we can learn from and about our mistakes.… (more)

Where We Once Belonged adapts the participative Samoan storytelling form of su'ifefiloi to tell the story of Alofa Filiga, an adolescent girl navigating Samoan society and the treacherous waters of near-adulthood. Su'ifefiloi means a woven garland of flowers. As a narrative technique, it refers to the stringing together of individual stories or episodes, each separate and unrelated like flower blossoms, but coming together to create a cohesive whole. In Where We Once Belonged, unlike in a traditional bildungsroman with its characteristic single transformative episode, anecdotes and poetry follow one another without regard to order or continuity. The story emerges slowly, and there are a multitude of turning points. This piecemeal style is particularly well-suited to a portrayal of adolescence, teetering on the edge of adulthood, the battery of experience juxtaposed with a sustained innocence, the difficulties of becoming an adult, and more specifically of becoming a woman, revealed slowly and partially.

This is an excerpt from a longer review on my blog, Around the World in 2000 Books.… (more)