My welcome into womanhood lecture began with the usual line—don’t wash your hair during your period, otherwise the blood is going to turn into ice and you’re going to be mad—moved to social etiquette, customs, and how being a woman was an honor. Then it was straight to the hormones, and contraception, contraception, contraception! “If you’re going to play around in the dark, be armed!” Mum drove me mad about my hormones, but when they did start to kick in, I was armed. Though Mum often said that her unplanned children were gifts from the sky, she wanted her daughters to have different kinds of gifts, like papers, degrees, a job that had nothing to do with a scrubbing brush.
Who were your idols when you were a girl?
My mother. I had a picture of her in my copybook. It always made me refocus whenever I was tempted to do something stupid like wag school. She was my idol because I had watched her overcome so many obstacles, but always with gusto. Nothing was a problem, only a chance to grow stronger. She didn’t wait for help to fall from the sky (I must mention here that although Tahiti is a French colony, there was no financial help from the government), and she didn’t need any man in his shiny armor to rescue her. She just took matters into her own hands. I was in awe of my mother, the hardcore feminist!
You have children of your own now, and your experience with motherhood must have had a lot of influence on this book. Can you talk about that a little?
The idea to write a mother-daughter story came to me a few days after my daughter, Turia, became a woman. I decided then to dedicate the book to Turia but changed my mind about this many times during the writing of
Frangipani.
My daughter has always been a strong-willed child, but turning into a woman really went to her head! Her Royal Highness became very good at dismissing me with the back of her hand, and as in the book, we had a major screaming match about a pen. Writing about it was very therapeutic! Meanwhile my mother was reminding me that, as an adolescent, I was very good at dismissing her with sharp nods, and she advised me to foster this new strong woman because being a strong woman is a blessing, not a curse. By the time
Frangipani
was completed, I had accepted my very strong-willed daughter and was even finding her very inspiring. When Turia read the book, she burst into tears at the passage of Materena crying in the church, and said, “Mum, is this how you used to feel?” I replied, “This is how mothers all over the world feel!”
Rights to your book have sold throughout the world, so clearly the story you tell has a kind of universal appeal that transcends its Tahitian setting. Does this surprise you at all?
I write about people, they just happen to be from Tahiti, and though there is a strong Tahitian influence, these people have the same desires and hopes as any other people in the world. Tahitian readers always recognize themselves or relatives in my books the same as Australian readers do. The only difference is that the Australian readers find the insight into Tahitian culture fascinating, whereas Tahitian readers don’t make much fuss about it.
How did your family and friends in Tahiti react to your writing? Does your mother enjoy your work?
Relatives were very intrigued when
L’arbre a Pain
(
Breadfruit
) was released in Tahiti, and many commented on the thickness of the book. “Almost as thick as the Bible!” The tribe was present at the book launch in Papeete, dressed up in their best clothes and sporting their best behavior. Patiently, they waited in the queue for their turn to have their book signed and made sure that the other people understood they knew me very well and that, unlike “you people,” they weren’t just fans. So one auntie loudly mentioned as she hugged me tight that once as a baby I ate a peg and it came out of my
caca
three days later. Thanks, Auntie! Copies of
L’arbre a Pain
are now proudly displayed all over the neighborhood where I grew up, next to the Bible and the statue of the Virgin Mary Understanding Woman.
When
Breadfruit
was released, my youngest sister, Virginie, orally translated it to our mother, every night, as Mum sat there sipping her glass of wine. It was quite painful for Mum to listen to her mother’s story (the chapter “Kika” is about my grandmother), and she was a bit annoyed that I had made her teacher a smoker when he had never smoked in his life (the chapter “Teacher”), but the lesbian scene was fine. In Mum’s own words, “Oh, it happens, you know.”
What is it like to go back to Tahiti now that you’ve been living in Australia for so long?
During my absence, my mother briefly keeps me informed of what’s happening in the family. Who’s pregnant, who gave birth, who’s dying, who’s not talking to whom (until Sunday at Mass when the two will reconcile with the peace-be-with-you embrace), my sisters’ follies, my brother’s cooking, the nephews, the nieces, the cousins, the oranges are really sweet this year . . . so in a way I’m still home. But the second I step out of the airplane is when I cry out with joy because I’m truly home. I love my island and my family with a passion. Everything fascinates me—the majestic mountains, the hibiscus hedges, the rides in the truck, the people and their stories. Had I never left, I’m sure I wouldn’t be as fanatical and enthusiastic.
How did you begin writing? Did you start to write thinking that you’d try to get your work published, or was it more gradual than that?
Pregnant with my third child and feeling very homesick, I began to write a short story—“The Electricity Man”—about a woman, Materena, telling off the electricity man for daring to disconnect her electricity when she didn’t even receive a disconnection notice. I’d lived that scene so many times in my childhood that I knew it by heart. Writing it made me feel very good, it was like I was back home. I kept on writing (since it was making me so happy) and at my husband’s suggestion sent my stories to literary journals. Within weeks these stories were published in various journals, a few from universities, with requests for more stories. Months later, a publisher rang to ask me if I had a novel in mind. She particularly wanted to read more about Materena. And
Breadfruit,
which tells the lives and loves of an extended Tahitian family, with the delightful Materena as the main character, came to life. I remember pushing my beautiful baby boy into the world thinking, “I have to finish my book before Mamie dies!”
Questions and topics for discussion
1.
Frangipani
is, at its heart, a mother-daughter story. Did the novel remind you at all of your own mother? Which scenes between Materena and Leilani were the most meaningful to you?
2. In Tahiti, a woman is considered wise to have a child with a man first, before she marries him, to see if he’ll make a good father. What were some of the other cultural norms depicted in the novel that impressed or surprised you?
3. What do you most admire about Materena’s character? Do you find her inspiring? At what points is she at her best in the novel?
4. Tahitian society is obviously very different from ours, but a lot of Materena’s struggles (making ends meet while raising three children, getting along with relatives and in-laws) seem familiar in general terms. Which aspects of the narrative did you like best, the familiar parts or the more exotic details?
5. Did you ever get (or give) a “welcome into womanhood” talk? What do you think of Materena’s many nuggets of wisdom?
6. The Tahiti that Célestine Vaite describes is a matriarchal place. Women are the ones with common sense, the ones who make the tough decisions and see to it that the family holds together. But at the beginning of the book Materena has an impossible time trying to convince Pito that she should be allowed to pick up his paycheck so that he doesn’t spend it all at the bar. Discuss the roles of the women and men in this story. What do you think of Materena and Pito’s relationship?
7. There’s a lot of hardship in this novel, but
Frangipani
is notably void of sadness and self-pity. Do you think there’s a lesson to Vaite’s story in that respect? How does reading her book make you reflect on American culture?
8. Vaite’s love for Tahiti is completely evident in this novel, even though she pokes fun at many aspects of island life. What kind of story would you tell if you were to draw on your own childhood and upbringing as Vaite does in
Frangipani?
Célestine Vaite on her own life as a reader
Since becoming an avid reader at the age of eleven, my reading has gone through several stages.
At eleven, I was hooked on the works of Balzac, Zola, Dostoevsky. Novels thicker than the Bible with pages and pages of description and countless characters coming in and out (brothers, sisters, cousins . . . ), but I had all the time in the world for family sagas! And I really didn’t mind reading four paragraphs about a tree.
Eight years later, a mother and a university student with very limited reading time, thick novels were out. Paragraphs of description got on my nerves. Too many characters tired and confused me. I wanted to be entertained, fast, in between studying, breastfeeding, washing, etc. I fell in love with Guy de Maupassant’s short stories. He is a master of short fiction and shows a deep knowledge of human nature whether he writes about
paysans,
courtesans, barons, abandoned children . . .
By the time I moved to Australia at the age of twenty-two to follow my husband, the father of my two children, Guy de Maupassant was still my hero, but I felt that to survive in this foreign country, I had best master the English language. So for about two years I was a magazine reader. Mostly women’s magazines such as
New Idea, Woman’s Day, Women’s Weekly,
etc.
As I grew a bit more confident, I started to read poems by the Australian writer Banjo Patterson, short stories by Roald Dahl, and novels with short chapters—
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker,
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
by Fannie Flagg.
Later, much more confident and missing my big extended family, I started to read books about families and other cultures:
The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan,
Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel,
The Color of Water
by James McBride,
Once Were Warriors
by Alan Duff,
Hanna’s Daughters
by Marianne Fredriksson.
I’m still hooked on novels that give me an insight into another culture. I just can’t get enough of them! I love the unusual way the characters speak, the settings, the family stories. Some favorites:
A Kiss from Maddalena
by Christopher Castellani,
The Almond Picker
by Simonetta Agnello Hornby,
Mao’s Last Dancer
by Li Cunxin,
Falling Leaves
by Adeline Yen Mah.