Logs in the Current of the Sea
Neli Lifuka
Memoir, 1978
A Tuvaluan woman's first-person account of island life, family and community, and of how Tuvaluans moved through the wider Pacific in the twentieth century.
Books set in Tuvalu
One book by a writer from Tuvalu, set there, that gives a real sense of the place: Logs in the Current of the Sea.
About the literature of Tuvalu
Little writing from Tuvalu has reached English readers, as the islands' stories and songs were traditionally passed on aloud rather than printed. Tuvalu, nine islands in the Pacific, was the British-ruled Ellice Islands until independence in 1978; Tuvaluan, a Polynesian language, is spoken alongside English. With few publishers at home, English-language books about the islands have largely come from visiting historians and anthropologists.
Start with Barrie Macdonald's Cinderellas of the Empire: Towards a History of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which traces missions, traders and the split from the Gilberts. Niko Besnier's Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll shows how letters and church texts shape feeling and standing on Nukulaelae. Gerd Koch's The Material Culture of Tuvalu, translated from German, catalogues canoes, houses and fishing gear.
By writers from Tuvalu
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