Pina

May 30, 2022
Peu’s English-language debut harnesses a chorus of voices from her native Tahiti, a paradise only in the minds of non-natives. Pina is the second to last of nine children born in the downtrodden community of Tenaho. Ridiculed at school for being poor, Pina is neglected and abused by her indifferent, angry mother and alcoholic father, Auguste, and tries to protect her baby sister and teenage brother Pauro, who has fallen in love with a Frenchman. The precarious family balance is shattered as Auguste becomes unhinged after recovering from a car accident in which a woman is killed. Told at first from Pina’s perspective, the narrative gathers a violent and blood-soaked momentum as it focuses alternately on Pina’s parents and siblings in successive chapters. The family, descendants of island warriors who opposed European expansion, serves as a vehicle for a fierce message about the destructive nature of colonial oppression and the potential for change. While the many points of view somewhat diminish the suspense concerning Pina’s fate, Peu does a lovely job making their voices resonate. This evocative and layered story is a treat.

May 15, 2022
In Tahiti, Tenaho is one of those "quartiers nobody ever hears about," but what happened to that family "with too many kids . . . was beyond all expectation." Decades ago, Auguste and Ma married in love. Nine children later, screaming, slapping, and beating are commonplace. Alcohol fuels Auguste's vilest offenses, rendering him comatose following a car accident. In his absence, 16-year-old Pauro falls in love, 15-year-old Rosa indiscriminately chases sex, nine-year-old Pina watches all--including their youngest Mo�ra. A haunting poem--"A small body sways," it begins--interrupts the narrative seven times, adding additional lines with each iteration until finally closing on "empty." The relentless violence here perhaps warrants a warning, but the worst horrors, award-winning author Peu exposes in her English debut, belong to colonialism. That Peu, who is Mā'ohi (indigenous Tahitian), writes in French, the language of the island's white conquerors, already manifests that occupation. "Forging a voice in English that feels true to Titaua Peu's rough-hewn, oral, humane prose," writes translator Zuckerman, was certainly a multilayered accomplishment of careful understanding and empathic respect. Bearing witness seems a minimal obligation for global readers.

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June 1, 2022
Prizewinning Tahitian novelist Peu exposes the human toll of colonialism and poverty in this polar opposite of a picture postcard. "Every story begins with a family story. Every family has its people bound by blood." Nine-year-old Pina, living in a shack on the outskirts of Papeete, the eighth of nine children, has her mean, worn-out mother and Auguste, her violent, alcoholic father. When he falls into a coma after a drunken-driving accident, Pina goes to live with relatives in the countryside. But her relief from abuse is short-lived. Against all expectation, Auguste survives, now convinced he's on a mission from God to cleanse his family and Tahiti itself of immorality. Told in symphonic chapters from varying points of view, the novel follows the family and community through violent events and political unrest, culminating in a rapid-fire series of shocking crimes. Peu paints a blunt, unsparing picture of island life: Young girls are drugged and assaulted at Epstein-esque orgies; gay men are beaten in homophobic hate crimes; poverty, alcoholism, and abuse are rampant. Pina's sister Hannah fled to Paris yet can't escape the legacy of colonialism: "Vaita, the first prophet, the visionary, had foretold: in one or two or three centuries the earth will be despoiled, the oceans emptied out, desecrated forever. And their children tormented and lost for having forgotten the very name of the moon that saw their birth." Colonialism, one character says, "is limited to no era, to no age. It's simply there. It's simply, always been there. It's changed a bit over time, but fundamentally it's all the same. The soldiers are gone, replaced by Golden Boys straight out of France's fanciest business school." And the burden is borne by people like Pina, "a tender sacrifice on the altar of squalor." A scalding corrective to the romantic Western view of French Polynesia written with authority, urgency, and compassion.

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July 1, 2022

The first Polynesian author to be awarded the Eug�ne Dabit Prize, Peu makes her English-language debut with this lacerating story of Pina, born into an impoverished family of nine children and symbolically shouldering the burden of her ancestors as well as the current state of her country, Tahiti. The nine-year-old runs a gauntlet of abuse perpetrated by her mother, Ma; her father, Auguste; and her classmates. Opening with Pina's narration of her everyday struggles, the novel shifts to the stories of various family members, including her sister Hannah, who lives in France; her brother Pauro, who is in love with a French man; and her father, an alcoholic, who falls into a coma after a drunk driving crash in which he kills a woman. When he recovers, he goes on a murderous rampage in the name of religion. Tahiti, which plays a prominent role in the novel, is presented as a nation oppressed by French colonization and a "playground for idiots looking for something exotic." VERDICT Relentless and powerful in its depiction of violence and brutality within Pina's family and the Tahitian community at large.--Jacqueline Snider

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