{"id":1272,"date":"2022-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:45:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:45:43","slug":"beats-of-the-pua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/03\/03\/beats-of-the-pua\/","title":{"rendered":"Beats of the Pu’a"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Maria Samuela<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Te Herenga Waka University Press<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, March 3rd 2022<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The title of Maria Samuela\u2019s first short story collection refers to the drums that accompany traditional Cook Island dances, \u201ccarrying the narratives of a culture to its people,<\/em>\u201d and the book is redolent with the sights and sounds of Wellington\u2019s Pacifika community from the 1950s to today. Samuela, a Wellingtonian of Cook Islands descent, evocatively conveys the experience of living within and between two cultures in a series of intimate domestic dramas that refract familiar scenarios such as teen pregnancy and parental loss through an Island lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are not easy lives. Most (although not all) of the older generation have low-paid, labour-intensive jobs as cleaners or in factories and freezing works, while the younger generation pushes back against parental and Church authority as they try to establish their own identities. As one teenage narrator says: \u201c[she is] grateful for her village of nurturing elders. She belongs somewhere, is part of something. But every now and then, in times of self-reflection, she dares to imagine freedom and finds the affiliation suffocating.\u201d<\/em> Homes may be filled with t\u012bvaeva, plastic flowers and velvet Jesus paintings, but Samuela\u2019s portraits transcend stereotype, recognising the complexity of individual experiences and, on occasion, skewering Papa\u2019a (P\u0101keha) readers with their own pretension: \u201c[the parents of White girls will] want to see the house you grew up in. They\u2019ve never actually been inside a state housing unit before…you think about borrowing your mate\u2019s one for the day \u2013 the one he paid a million dollars for and is renting out at seven hundred dollars a week.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many tales are poignant with loss and longing, and some, such as the confronting depiction of brutal schoolyard bullying in \u2018Ugly\u2019, are positively heartbreaking. But leaving one home presents the opportunity to find or make another, and there is much joy to be found in these stories, too: lives enriched by the sharing of food and song, the bustle of siblings, cousins, Aunts and Uncles, the ties of community and tradition, and the forging of fresh roots in a new land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samuela, the 2018 University Bookshop Fellow, drafted these stories during her MA at Victoria and spent considerable time on revisions. The polishing is reflected in the quality of the collection as a whole, and although some pieces have been published elsewhere \u2013 including two contenders for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize \u2013 they achieve a satisfying cohesion. Beats of the Pa\u2019u<\/em> opens with an arrival and reconciliation between father and son and closes with a deportation that may estrange mother and daughter. Irish-born Father O\u2019Shea makes repeat appearances, linking the different families within the same religious community, and the darker stories are interspersed by a tryptic of wickedly funny \u2018Love Rules\u2019 that are as illuminating as any of the more serious tales. Overlaying the rhythm of the drums is a polyphony of Island voices and a reminder that in matters of the heart \u2013 and, I suspect, everything else  \u2013 \u201cyour mama will have a say in it. Be prepared.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maria Samuela Te Herenga Waka University Press Otago Daily Times, March 3rd 2022 The title of Maria Samuela\u2019s first short story collection refers to the drums that accompany traditional Cook Island dances, \u201ccarrying the narratives of a culture to its people,\u201d and the book is redolent with the sights and sounds of Wellington\u2019s Pacifika community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[370,385,500,18,375],"class_list":["post-1272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-fiction","tag-maria-samuela","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}