Biography

Albert Wendt is an acclaimed novelist, poet and short-story writer who was born in Western Samoa on October 27, 1939.  At age 13, he was sent from Western Samoa to the New Plymouth Boys' High School in New Zealand on a government scholarship.  Wendt stayed in New Zealand to eventually earn a Master's in history from Victoria University in Wellington.  It was the experiences of growing up both in Samoa and in New Zealand, and his continued affection for both of these lands and the rich and complex cultures they contain that has been the inspiration for much of his writing.

At 29, Wendt returned to Samoa to teach at, and eventually run, Samoa College.  In 1974, he took up an appointment as Senior Lecturer in English at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.  Always interested in the administrative side of academia, he eventually became chair of the English Department, Dean of the School of Education, and eventually the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University.  He then went to the University of Auckland where he was the chair of the English Department from 1993 to 1995, and where he is currently working as a Professor of English.

Regarded by many as the Pacific's most talented writer, Wendt has written five novels, two collections of short stories and three collections of poetry.  Two of his books, Sons of the Return Home and Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree, have been made into feature films.  Wendt is currently co-writing a screenplay based on Black Rainbow for a third film.  His third novel, Leaves of the Banyan Tree, won the New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award. He has also edited two major anthologies of contemporary Pacific literature, Lali (1980) and Nuanua (1995), as well as a series of five volumes on contemporary poetry from Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides for Mana Publications.  Thus, Wendt has not only been a key contributor to Pacific literature, but he has been a major force in its promotion both within and beyond the academy.

Themes and Ideas in Wendt's Writings

Language in Wendt's Works

A notable feature of much of Wendt's work is his innovative uses of language.  In his very first published story, "Tagata, the Man who Searched for the Freedom Tree" (1963), for example, some of the characters in his story speak a "Samoan pidgin" of English that does away with articles, omits the auxiliary "to be", dispenses with inflections for the plural, and uses a simplified form of the present for all tenses.  In Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979), this experiment is developed further through the use of multiple narrative voices, which are humorously called "English-style", "Vaipe-style" (the version of pidgin spoken in the capital city of Apia), and "my-style", a supposed synthesis of the other forms.  Each of these voices carries a set of different cultural conceptions and limitations.  For example, "English-style" is shown to not be able to adequately account for the everyday experiences of Samoans.  In essence, Wendt's experiments with language is an attempt to show the tensions and issues involved in language use in the postcolony; a concern he has in common with many postcolonial writers.  Specifically, his rendering of English as it might be spoken by Samoans serves to indicate the "localized" nature of colonial languages, the limited capacities of these colonial languages to express the experiences of the indigenous peoples, and how their desire to use these "prestigious" languages may be thwarted by their incomplete mastery of them.

Postmodernism and Traditional Polynesian Narrative Modes

Beyond his innovative use of language, we also see the powerful use of intertextuality and self-reflexivity in his novels, short stories and poems.  Black Rainbow (1992), for example, borrows heavily from science fiction, mystery thrillers, works of "high" culture such as Kafka, Joyce and Camus, Polynesian mythology, and pop culture icons such as Bladerunner and Star Wars.  The title itself is drawn from acclaimed Maori artist Ralph Hotere's Black Rainbow lithograph series protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific.  (An example can be seen at the very top of this webpage).  As Ellis has suggested, Black Rainbow is "about other texts, constantly calling attention to its status as fiction and to the processes of representation" ("A Postmodernism" 101).  In Ola (1991), Wendt begins the novel with a foreword in which he explains that the novel is based on the contents of three beer cartons left on his front verandah by someone named Olamaiileoti Farou Monroe.  The contents of the cartons included mementos from Ola's life including diary entries, lists of things to do, poetry, etc.  With these raw materials, Wendt claims merely to have rearranged "the pieces in such a way that the readers (including Ola) could see the connections, a unity" (7-8).  With such a forward, Wendt is not only demonstrating his characteristic playfulness but also highlighting the degree to which fiction is the imaginative assembly and rendering of various bits of tales told before, life experiences of the author, and the reinterpretations of historical events into a whole.

One might be tempted to suggest that Wendt's work has simply come to adopt postmodern narrative techniques such as an emphasis on the constructed nature of the work and intextuality.   Wendt would however disagree with such a characterization, and  suggest that he has merely come to use and build upon traditional Polynesian narrative techniques.  In an interview about these issues, he specifically points to his grandmother's skill in telling fagogo, Samoan traditional stories as a significant source of inspiration for him.  In fagogo there is a set form, but significant freedom exists for the story teller to add different, tangential stories, metanarrative comments, and even songs in the midst of the central narrative (Ellis "Techniques," 83-4).  Indeed, Wendt has asserted that the styles of much of the writing being done by Pacific Islanders goes beyond realism to embrace pastiches of different elements.  He points to Sia Figiel, whose first novel Where We Once Belonged (1996) included an extensive blending of prose and poetry, and of satire and parody, as an exemplar of the future of Pacific literature (Ellis "Techniques," 90).

Decolonizing Culture

Our dead are woven into our souls like the hypnotic music of bone flutes: we can never escape them.  If we let them they can help illuminate us to ourselves and one another.  They can be a source of new-found pride, self-respect, and wisdom.  Conversely they can be the aitu [Samoan: malevolent spirit] that will continue to destroy us by blinding us to the beauty we are so capable of becoming as individuals, cultures, nations.  We must try to exorcise these aitu both old and modern.  ("Towards a New Oceania" 642)

Ellis has asserted that Wendt's fiction "can be read as an examination of how cultures are created, how various syncretic forms emerge and can be shaped in crucial ways to affirm rather than deny the vitality of new forms taken by traditional cultures" ("A Postmodernism" 104-5).  In a very succinct way, this statement points to a particularly prominent theme in Wendt's writings; his understanding of culture, its production and what culture "means" to those who bear it.  Wendt deals most explicitly with these issues in his essay "Towards a New Oceania" (1996 [1982]) in which he rejects the position espoused by some indigenous elites in the Pacific (and elsewhere) that there should be a conscious return to a pre-contact past and a "traditional culture" untainted by Western influence.  He disagrees not only with the characterization that cultures are ever static and can be somehow "preserved", but also with the idea that the past was in any sense of the word "perfect".  He writes:"[t]here was no Fall, no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in South Seas paradises, no Golden Age, except in Hollywood films, .. in the breathless sermons of our elite vampires, and in the fevered imaginations of our self-styled romantic revolutionaries" (644).

He does, however, point out the importance of rooting oneself in one's cultural traditions, as they are an important source of self-confidence, pride and wisdom.  He is highly critical of the colonial institutions of school and church that were based on the colonizer's racist assumptions of superiority.  These two institutions "undermined our confidence and self-respect, and made many of us ashamed of our cultures, transforming many of into Uncle Toms and revenants and what V.S. Naipaul has called "mimic men", inducing in us the feeling that only the foreign is right or proper or worthwhile" (648).  Now while one is rooted in one' s cultural traditions, Wendt does wholeheartedly support innovation, change and reinterpretation of those traditions to meet contemporary needs and issues.  He rejects cultural homogeneity and the idea that a "true Samoan" must think/act/believe in a certain prescribed manner, for a view where "usage determines authenticity" (644) and where the diversity of interpretations, views and beliefs of the different subcultures within a given society are the "life-blood" of that culture (646).  Such a position cannot ignore the difficulty most groups and individuals will have in allowing such diversity to coexist in close proximity, but in Wendt's opinion, allowing such diversity to blossom and grow is necessary for the growth and health of the larger culture and society.

Works by Wendt
 

Novels

Sons for the Return Home, 1973

Pouliuli, 1976

Leaves of the Banyan Tree, 1979 

Ola, 1991

Black Rainbow, 1992
 

Collections of Short Stories

Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree, 1974

The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man, 1986
 

Poetry

Inside Us the Dead: Poems 1961 to 1975, 1976

Shaman of Visions, 1984

Photographs, 1995
 

Anthologies edited by Albert Wendt

Some Modern Poetry from Fiji, 1975

Some Modern Poetry from Western Samoa, 1975

Some Modern Poetry from Vanuatu, 1975

Some Modern Poetry from the New Hebrides, 1975

Some Modern Poetry from the Solomons, 1975

Lali, an Anthology of Pacific Literature, 1980

Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980, 1996

Works Cited

Durix, Jean-Pierre. The Attempt "To Snare the Void and Give it Word." International Literature in English: Essays on the Major Writers.  R. L. Ross, ed. New York: Garland Press, 1991.  63-73.

Ellis, Juniper.  A Postmodernism of Resistance: Albert Wendt's "Black Rainbow." Ariel 25.4 (1994): 101-114.

Ellis, Juniper. "'The Techniques of Storytelling': An Interview with Albert Wendt." Ariel 28 .3 (1997): 79-94.

Hereniko, V. & D. Hanlon.  "An Interview with Albert Wendt." The Contemporary Pacific.  5.1 (1993): 112-131.

Wendt, Albert.  Towards a New Oceania.  Arnold Anthology of Post Colonial Literature in English.  1982.  J. Thieme, ed.  New York: Arnold Press, 1996.  641-652.

Wendt, Albert.  Ola.  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991.

Wendt, Albert.  Leaves of the Banyan Tree.  London: Penguin Press, 1978.

Published Interviews with Albert Wendt

Juniper Ellis. "'The Techniques of Storytelling': An Interview with Albert Wendt."  Ariel 28.3 (1997): 79-94.

Vilsoni Hereniko & David Hanlon.  "An Interview with Albert Wendt."  The Contemporary Pacific.  5.1 (1993): 112-131.

Michael Neill. Albert Wendt.  In the Same Room: Conversations with New Zealand's Writers.  E. Alley and M. Williams, eds.  Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1992.  100-118.

Ed Rampell. "An Angry Man: Albert Wendt, Scholar, Author."  Pacific Islands Monthly.  60.1 (1990): 55-57.

J.B. Beston.  Interview with Albert Wendt.  World Literature Written in English. 16.1 (1977): 151-162.

Selected Non-fiction Essays on Postcolonial Themes

"Towards a New Oceania.  Writers in East-West encounter : new cultural bearings  G. Amirthanayagam, ed.  London : Macmillan, 1982. pp.205-215.  Reprinted in Arnold Anthology of Post Colonial Literature in English.  J. Thieme, ed.  New York: Arnold Press, 1996.   pp.641-652

"Pacific maps and fiction(s) : a personal journey."  Migration and New Zealand Society : proceedings of the Stout Research Centre Sixth Annual Conference. Wellington : Stout Research Centre, 1990. pp.59-81.   Reprinted in Perceiving other worlds. Edwin Thumboo, ed. Singapore : Times Academy Press. 1991. pp.179-210. Reprinted also in Asian & Pacific Inscriptions : Identities, Ethnicities, Nationalities. Victoria, Australia: Meridian Press, 1995. pp.13-44

Other Resources

The University of Auckland library keeps a good listing of book reviews, articles, and books by and about Wendt posted on the Internet.  You can access it through their search engine, and simply enter "Albert Wendt" for the search.  There are also good listing for most of the major figures in Pacific literature including Witi Ihimaera, Epeli Hau'ofa, Reina Whaitiri, and Patricia Grace.

Author:  H. Odden, Fall 1998
 

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