What's the Story?

Writing: A Never-Ending Story

A poem often becomes a story, and stories sometimes never end.

My writing process is as hectic as everything else in my life. Someone once told me this is called 'organized chaos'. I love irony, so I took it as a compliment. 

I've been writing since I was twelve years old. I was a very imaginative kid. I had this fascination with blurbs on the backs of hardback book covers as well as magazine articles. National Geographic was my absolute favourite. Our school library had stacks and stacks of these magazines, dating all the way back to, like, 1970. I'd read and read, and then make up my own stories and write them in my exercise books. Much to the dismay of my teachers (especially the Maths teachers! Sorry Mrs Pelenato and Mr Epeli!). I just couldn't help myself. 

What I didn't realize as a child was that I was, slowly and surely, honing a love for telling stories about people and places. I learned to love descriptions. To appreciate nuances in the geography and topography of places I still haven't been to. I know a river still runs out of Eden. I saw the Tigris on my way out of Dubai. But which river was James Vance Marshall talking about, and where can I find it, in this big, confusing world? To hear and respect different voices, some of which belong to people who are no longer alive. Nelson Mandela. There are days when I think I walked with him the whole way to Johannesburg and back, to see his mother. To eat home-cooked food, just one more time.  I learned to feel different types of fear, and different types of pain. I'll always think The Boy Who Was Afraid was a missed opportunity to open so many conversations about Polynesian masculinity. About it being okay to cry. To ask for help...I learned, also, to love anomalies. Misfits. Shirts that have one sleeve longer than the other. German prisoners of war that fall in love with upper-class Jewish heiresses. Some of my most favourite books- simply for their amazing attention to detail- are:

1. Cry, The Beloved Country (By Alan Paton)

Favourite Quote: "There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa."

2. Project Hail Mary (by Andy Weir)

Favourite Quote: “Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.”

3. As The Earth Turns Silver (by Alison Wong)

Favourite Quote: "Their god is a white ghost. You see the pictures. He has pale skin and a big nose and a glow of moonlight round his long brown hair. He has many names, just as we Tongyan have many names. We have a milk name, an adult name, perhaps a scholar or chosen name. The Jesus-ghosts call their god Holy Ghost. Even they know he is a ghost. People are like their gods, just as they are like their animals. They even call him Father. We do not need to name them, these gweilo. Even they know they are ghosts."

My love for details has given me a very eccentric reading list (which I love!). It has also given me a love for telling stories about various symptoms of the human condition; for telling them in different voices and drawing them in different colours. Because there is no singular way to be human, there can be no singular story that best conveys our humanness. Every story is just one of a trillion ways to express our humanity. Even the most high-fantasy or science-fiction plot is about our humanity. If it comes from us, it must be about us. 

The most hectic thing about my writing process is that I never actually know what anything is going to be. A single word becomes a poem. A poem becomes a story. A story becomes one of my many unfinished manuscripts. An essay can either be done in six minutes (no joke- I write faster than a bullet train when I'm under pressure), or six months. No in between. The biggest blessing is that I still have people who want me to write, and who actually want to read what I write. I'm a print and performance poet as well as a songwriter (I think? lol). I've published a few stories too. I'll always write more poetry than any other genre. A writing mentor I had as a teenager told me Pacific women write mostly poetry. She didn't know why, but I do. As Pasifika, our earliest modes of transmitting information were song, dance, chant and speech. Oral tradition preserved our stories and histories for eons before the papalagi brought their 'written word' to us. When we 'crossed over', as my Sa'anapu people would say, we brought with us our love for, and skill at the original record keeping methods. It's in our blood, basically. 

At my grandmother's funeral in September, I learned that she was a poet, songwriter and playwright, in both English and Gagana Samoa. With the few opportunities available to indigenous women in early post-colonial Samoa, she was limited to church and village spaces. She never told me about any of this. She always said how proud she was of me, writing and performing and traveling. She let me shine. She never, and I mean never, said, "you got your gifts from me." She allowed my gifts to be just that- mine. My own voice. My own story. Only last week, a cousin of mine shared with us some pages of our grandmother's handwritten autobiography manuscript. One thing I learned from my grandmother's writing: love. True, unconditional, sacrificial love. The kind that isn't 'cool' anymore. But that our world still desperately needs. Because this kind of love endures. Just like storytelling. Just like humanity. 

The title of my grandmother's manuscript, in her striking, confident handwriting. Translated and abridged, it reads:

I AM VASATI:

The Story of My Life

As I Have Written It, Aged Seventy-Six

Someday, I hope to edit and publish this on her behalf. She was a woman ahead of her time, in so many ways.