Read Around Oceania Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Oceania.
Best books from Oceania (266)
241.
Mata Sara by Regis Tove Stella EN
Country: Oceania / 
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Description:
Mata Sara is a novel that fictionalises the ideas of alienation and displacement through the lives of 4 indigenous students who win scholarships to study overseas. These students endeavour through various ways to adapt to new landscapes and environments. In this new place, they find themselves strangers, a minority in the midst of a sea of dimdims who act strangely, whose values, practices etc. are often not understood by the students. At the same time, the dimdims also have crooked eyes because they cannot understand these students. Living in a foreign place, they encounter racism and other p... continue
243.
Cultural Refugees : Anthology of Poems by Julie Mota EN
Country: Oceania / Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Description:
This poetry collection is an exploration on whether cultural immersions and transitional processes are producing cultural refugees in our midst. The different perspectives represented in this collection opens up dialogue on how we Papua New Guineans look at our society, the changes that are happening and challenges us to discuss, embrace and pave a way forward for further exploration on the themes raised. It is a reflective collection that invites further dialogue even in informative and entertaining form.
244.
245.
Leaves of the Banyan Tree by Albert Wendt EN
SamoaDescription:
An epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature.
246.
Freelove : A Novel by Sia Figiel EN
Description:
It is 1985 in Nu'uolemanusa/Village of the Sacred Owl, Western Samoa. Madonna's Like a Virgin rules the airwaves. Brilliant and inquisitive high school student and Star Trek fanatic, 17 1/2 year old Inosia Alofafua Afatasi, is sent by her mother to the capital, Apia, to buy three giant white threads. While she waits at the bus-stop, Mr. Ioane Viliamu, her teacher of Science and Mathematics and recent graduate of the University of Papua New Guinea and the pastor's eldest son, in turn, her spiritual brother, stops to offer her a ride in his red pick-up truck. Should she wait for the bus? Or shou... continue
247.
248.
Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel EN
Description:
Thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga struggles to come to terms with womanhood, her search for identity, and the restrictions of life in her Samoan village.
249.
Coconut Milk by Dan Taulapapa McMullin EN
Description:
Coconut Milk is the first book-length collection of poems by contemporary queer Samoan writer and painter Dan Taulapapa McMullin. His poems humorously attack cultural appropriation, gender, and the hypocrisies of Western influence in Oceania today. Pulling at the stereotype of a beautiful Polynesia available for the taking, his poems challenge and carve out new avenues of meaning for Pacific Islanders.
250.
El Lugar Donde Nacimos by Sia Figiel ES
Description:
La explosión de las fantasías y pesadillas de la adolescencia en el marco de la Polinesia retratada más allá de tópico idílico. «Gauguin ha muerto. No existe el paraíso» (de Alofa)
A través del relato de Alofa, la protagonista, tres adolescentes samoanas comienzan a desvelar los tabús de la sexualidad y la ausencia de veracidad en las afirmaciones de los mayores, y aprenden así a sus expensas el rigor de la hipocresía social. El efecto de contraste entre la amargura del anecdotario familiar y la l&iacut... continue