Book and Media Reviews
277 book and media reviews 287 myriad challenges they have faced. British sailing ship, the hms Bounty, Because these issues are the realities of which had been commanded by Salesa, his family, and his community, Captain William Bligh and whose this book is veridical and powerful. It mission was supported by botanist challenges readers to acknowledge and Sir Joseph Banks, a founding member embrace the Pacific futures of New of the Royal Society who had traveled Zealand and take action to provide a to Tahiti with Captain Cook. The ship fair chance for everyone in the coun- had sailed to Tahiti with the purpose try. However, addressing the strong of collecting and distributing bread- tensions between the Indigenous fruit throughout other tropical British Māori and settler Pacific communities territories, such as the West Indies. in Auckland, or the racial disharmony Breadfruit was particularly valued by within Pacific communities, would British plantation owners who saw it have made this study even more as a potentially cheap food source for provocative. their enslaved workers. Overall, Island Time is an insight- In April of 1789, twenty-five ful and well-researched book that sailors, led by Fletcher Christian, contributes to the understudied issues took hold of the Bounty while near of racial segregation of Pacific peoples the islands of Tonga. Seeking to hide in multiethnic cities like Auckland. from the British Royal Navy, the Hopefully, it will encourage further mutineers sailed to Tubua‘i in the studies of the complex mechanisms of Austral Island archipelago and then racial segregation in other cities, such on to Tahiti, where they partnered as Sydney, Honolulu, and Los Angeles, with Tahitians and collected livestock. and prompt explorations into ways to While some mutineers chose to stay eradicate it for a better future of all. in Tahiti, others eventually sailed to masami tsujita levi and settled on the then-uninhabited island of Pitcairn. Shortly after their National University of Samoa settlement, the newly founded com- *** munity faced considerable issues, including alcoholism, illness, murder, The Bounty from the Beach: suicide, and heavy-handed control of Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Polynesian women by the European Essays, edited by Sylvie Largeaud- men. After the often violent deaths of Ortega. Canberra: Australian National all but one of the men on the island, University, 2018. isbn paper 978- Pitcairn settled into a state of relative 1-76046-244-4; isbn online 978-1- social order. Descendants of the origi- 76046-245-1; ix + 262 pages, nal settlers living on Pitcairn today illustrations, paintings, maps, number about fifty people, and many bibliography. Print, aud$48.00; more live on Norfolk Island. e-book, free download. Historically, writers, filmmakers, and historians have been especially The Bounty from the Beach explores interested in portraying the story of a European historical moment in this mutiny. European perspectives the Pacific—the 1789 mutiny on the have traditionally dominated the 288 the contemporary pacific • 32:1 (2020)
narratives, focusing the storytelling on picking apart the main characters, Banks, Christian, and Bligh, among their actions, the scenarios presented, other sailors on the ship. These stories and the colonial discourses exempli- have centered on either the dynamics fied through written portrayals and on the ship that caused the mutiny descriptions. She states, “their narra- or those of encountering unfamil- tive of Mutiny further contributed to iar islands, cultures, and peoples the stereotypically colonial represen- of Oceania. Meanwhile, Islanders tation of Tahiti as a carefree island positioned within these histories— where natives lived in ‘a timeless, Tahitian, Pitcairn, Mangarevan, and myth-ridden, ahistorical haze’” (151). Austral—have voices and experiences Chapter six examines the famous that are usually left out of such stories. 1962 Marlon Brando film, Mutiny on Edited by Sylvie Largeaud-Ortega, the Bounty, in the same manner—criti- a specialist in literature and societ- cal of the characters’ portrayal and ies of the anglophone Pacific at the how the main characters, the Bounty University of French Polynesia in sailors, interacted with their Pacific Puna‘auia, Tahiti, this book is a surroundings and the people they met. compilation of cross-disciplinary But in these two chapters, as with perspectives. The introduction most others in the book, there con- explains that the work attempts to add tinues to be very minimal engagement fresh perspectives to past writings on with how Pacific Islanders themselves the mutiny on the Bounty, to be criti- might have interacted with the Euro- cal of past Western colonial perspec- peans, including what their feelings tives, and to uplift “Pacific Islander and intentions might have been and views, tales and writings” in the telling how they shared or didn’t share their of this history (13). After a thorough lives with the people arriving at their read, however, it is evident that most shores. chapters have trouble completing all Two chapters stand out because of of these goals. While I applaud most their engagement with Tahitian ways of the chapters for being thoroughly of knowing, chapters one and three. critical of past perspectives, in terms Chapter one starts with a history of of uplifting Pacific voices, overall the Tahitian and other Pacific Islander book privileges the established Bounty encounters with Europeans, and it narratives that continue to silence describes the importance of breadfruit Pacific Islander voices and views. within the Tahitian culture and the For example, chapter four examines world. The chapter continues with the Charles Nordhoff and James Nor- history of voyaging and wayfinding man Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty, through the eyes of Tupaia, a well- written in 1932, and it pinpoints the known Tahitian navigator. Chapter purpose of the historical fiction as a three is about Tahitian tattoos on commercial venture, with stereotypical Tahitian and European bodies, and it depictions of Tahiti as a paradise examines the history, societal context, used as a way to increase book sales. and relationships between Tahitians Here, Largeaud-Ortega continues to and Europeans that resulted from offer a critical review of the book, these tattoos. As the author, Rachael book and media reviews 289
Utting, suggests, “By regarding the Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from surface of the skin as an interface Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea between sailor and Islander that in the Marshall Islands, by Joseph H allowed or sanctioned integration Genz. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i into island life, an analysis of the skin Press, 2018. isbn cloth 978-0-8248- encourages a deeper understanding 6791-1; isbn paper 978-0-8248-6790- of sailor/Islander relations in early 4; 241 pages, illustrations, figures, contact Tahiti” (123). notes, glossary, bibliography, index. Although this work explicitly Cloth, us$68.00; paper, us$28.00. endeavors to uplift “Pacific Islander views, tales and writings,” its success In Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from in doing so is limited (13). In terms of Nuclear Refugees to People of the the broader scholarship concerning Sea in the Marshall Islands, Joseph Tahiti, this anthology shows that there Genz gives a firsthand account of the is still persistent focus on European journeys of Captain Korent Joel and, experiences and explorers and on later, Alson Kelen as they ventured to Pacific Islands as experienced through restore wave piloting, the traditional outsider perspectives. Furthermore, navigation system of Rongelap in the the chapters do not sufficiently engage Marshall Islands. A successful voyage with the vast contemporary Pacific would complete Captain Korent’s scholarship available that prioritizes ruprup jokur (breaking the shell) test Pacific epistemologies and ontologies, of expertise, through which he would such as work by Katerina Teaiwa, become a ri-meto—a navigator, but David Chang, and Noenoe Silva, nor more specifically a person of the sea. do they engage in dialogue that broad- Writing from his own perspective, ens our understanding of historiogra- Genz weaves the account by follow- phies in the Pacific. ing the framework of bwebwenato Still, there are audiences that will (Marshallese storytelling), resulting benefit from the critical discourses this in a cone- or pyramid-like organiza- collection of essays offers, especially tion, where the “bottom [or begin- its reminder that it is important to be ning] represents the largely public, critical of stories told from only one accessible, and interconnected forms point of view. However, though Pacific of knowledge. . . . A slice in the nar- Islanders may benefit from the book’s rowing of the cone midway repre- addition to the limited number of criti- sents the increasing restrictions of cal reviews of European encounters in such elevated fields of knowledge. . French Polynesia, overall the volume . . The apex—navigation—subsumes leaves readers wanting deeper engage- everything in the cone, and this is ments with the people of these places the most carefully guarded realm of and their perspectives. knowledge” (12). Each chapter begins vehia wheeler with a vignette of the ruprup jokur journey for Captain Korent and, in Pape‘ete, Tahiti his own way, Genz. The reader thus *** receives a progressively more detailed account of the journey and a more