Tomorrow Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen launch their book Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology, which brings together poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, and song, by three generations of women.

The following essay is by 20-year-old student Kali Regenvanu. It appears near the end of the book, bringing together threads that are woven throughout: railing against entrenched sexism, violence, addiction and poverty.

A letter to Vanuatu: Unkept promises

Vanuatu, you have taken from me.

You have stolen from me my rightful property: my freedom. You have taken it and altered it beyond recognition, twisting it into free doom. You have twisted this Pacific paradise into an unholy hell for women, soaked in misery from decades of our tears – the tears of the women you have crushed under your weight.

Vanuatu, though banning plastic straws has earned you the global title of underdog David to the world’s Goliath, do not fool yourself. Whereas banning straws is a step towards a sunny horizon, your history of wrongdoing to those who live within you places you a hundred steps behind. How can you sleep at night, knowing our nation cares more for the wellbeing of distant beings in the ocean than your very own kin? The ones that gave you life without whom you would not exist.

Vanuatu, tell me why our local news is littered with the rape, abuse and killing of women and girls. As if it’s normal. The men of our nation are disturbingly ignorant to read these bone-chilling stories each and every day and do absolutely nothing about it. Are we not all equally human? Or have the men in our nation evolved into robots, mechanical beings without hearts? How are you so comfortable in your misogyny that you can happily ignore us women?

You stick your fingers into your ears while we scream for help. 

You squeeze your eyes shut when you see us suffer.

You tie your hands behind your back when we ask you to free us from our shackles. 

You clamp your mouth shut when you’re given the opportunity to speak up.

You choose ignorance.

And when you choose ignorance, you leave us to suffer, tormented by your inaction.

While you sit on your throne and sip the sweet nectar of power and carelessness, we lie crippled and broken at your feet. A mere shell of who we could be, if you gave us the chance.

Wings clipped and dreams shot down.

Dear Vanuatu, it has become increasingly clear that you are afraid of us. You try to contain us like a deadly virus, to make us submit like dogs. You are afraid because you see our potential and our power. Though you attempt again and again to brainwash us with your dull male chauvinism and tacky paternalistic power structures, we have vision that goes beyond your feeble-minded sight. We will unlearn all the lessons that you have forced upon us in your medieval school of thought.

Every lesson made to 

Suppress

Humiliate 

Silence

Censor

Muzzle

Blame 

And

Disrespect

will be discontinued. These lessons are not only outdated, they never should have existed in the first place.

No longer will we be controlled by you. Vanuatu, you owe us humanity and correction. No more violence, no more intimidation. No more incompetent government officials. No more ignorance. No more pretending.

Vanuatu, you have had years to do the right thing and you have not. Snap out of it. The women of Vanuatu are beyond exhausted by your ineptitude. As a nation we represent a gross violation of human rights and wellbeing. The ranking of Vanuatu as the happiest place on Earth was a bright cover-up, a beautiful lie fed to us to make women believe we are lucky to live on these “heavenly” islands. Vanuatu is the happiest place on Earth for the sexist, the power-hungry and cruel. It is the happiest place on Earth to the blissfully and stupidly unaware.

We are not a democracy, a place of freedom and choice. The only choice we as women are given is to be silent and submissive housewives, or to be shunned and shamed by society.

How is it fair that I am afraid to walk down my very own street? 

Afraid as I lie in my bed?

Afraid for my sister to live and to breathe in Vanuatu’s poisoned air?

So long as there is discrimination, violence and cruelty against women, I cannot love the sea that laps our rich black sand beaches; I cannot love the island breeze on a hot day. I cannot love the beauty here with all this ugliness. Our beautiful waters have been tainted by the oil spill that is toxic masculinity and patriarchy, choking those that should be able to thrive here.

To hell with your straws. Fix your human rights violations.

We are in crisis. This is not a small obstacle, a small hurdle in the grand scheme of life. This is a lifelong tragedy that has blocked any sense of normality and fairness for women.

It must be nice to be a man and have the option not to care.

Our national anthem states “yumi strong mo yumi fri / we are strong and we are free” and yet we aren’t. Vanuatu, hold to your promise of fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual.

Not tomorrow, not in a month, not in a year and not in a decade. 

Today.

Now.

Or don’t bother handing out promises you had no intention of keeping. 

Additional note from Regenvanu:

I currently live in Nova Scotia, on the East Coast of Canada and just finished my first year of university here. I started my first semester studying health sciences, but I changed to a double major in Women and Gender Studies and Sociology because it suits my passions in social justice much more. As a newborn baby, my family and I lived in Vanuatu for a short time before moving to Canada. We eventually moved back to Vanuatu when I was 11, so I spent most of my formative years as a young woman growing up in Port-Vila. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic I haven’t been able to go back to Vanuatu since August of 2019.

Vanuatu has represented many different things for me; it has represented the wonderful and beautiful, like important connections to family as well as the challenging, problematic patriarchal structures that exist and govern the lives of women and girls in Vanuatu. Growing up in Vanuatu pushed me to activism and social justice, as I was constantly faced with sexism, racism, homophobia and classism, through my own experiences as well as the experiences of others. I think it is important to simultaneously recognise the beauty of Vanuatu while also admitting to (and actively trying to challenge) the harsh reality that marginalised groups, like women, face every day living there. I wrote this piece not because I want to condemn Vanuatu and all that it represents. The reality is quite the opposite: I love Vanuatu deeply and it crushes me to see it fall deeper and deeper into the harsh realities of sexism and male violence every day that these issues are not addressed.

I feel very grateful that my work is being published in the anthology alongside so many other talented women, and I look forward to the important conversations that will undoubtedly emerge from all of the pieces in the anthology.

Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology, edited by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen (Victoria University Press, $30) is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington. 

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

AUCKLAND

1  Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber, $37)

In Ishiguro’s excellent new novel, Klara is a solar-powered “artificial friend”, chosen as a companion by an unwell girl called Josie. 

2  The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw (Vintage, $38)

“I tried to get a fix on the haze of my childhood. Were my recollections real, or had I read them in a book?”

3  Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

The people of Aotearoa New Zealand are imagining a less colonised world every day.

(Unity Wellington had a shindig a few weeks back to celebrate this book’s remarkable foothold on the charts; Moana Jackson spoke at length and BWB recorded the whole thing).

4  Bug Week & Other Stories by Airini Beautrais (Victoria University Press, $30)

This year’s winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction! Aka the Ockham, aka that big New Zealand fiction prize, aka $57,000. 

Read an essay by Beautrais here, and our reaction to the awards here.

5  The Forager’s Treasury: The Essential Guide to Finding and Using Wild Plants in Aotearoa by Johanna Knox (Allen & Unwin, $45)

A book that tells you which of the weeds in your garden are actually a nutritious snack, and which will come in handy in dying your t-shirts, or making your own lip balm.   

6  Aroha: Māori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with our Planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)

The people of Aotearoa New Zealand are growing wiser and more content every day, too. 

7  Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Victoria University Press, $35)

“From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori-Russian-Catalonian family. This beguiling and hilarious novel by Adam Foundation Prize winner Rebecca K Reilly owes as much to Shakespeare as it does to Tinder” – from the publisher’s blurb

8  Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (Doubleday, $37)

Uh oh… The first thing Google says is: “For fans of BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD.” The publisher instead (wisely) compares it to Convenience Store Woman “with a fantasy twist”.  

9  Shuggie Bain by Stuart Douglas (Pan Macmillan, $38)

The tragic Booker-winning novel about a boy trying to save his mother from alcoholism. 

10  One: Pot, Pan, Planet: A Greener Way to Cook for You, Your Family and the Planet by Anna Jones (4th Estate, $55)

Anna Jones always includes lovely little anecdotes in her recipes, like “These are what we ate the day after we got married. One of the amazing people who cooked our wedding feast, Bea (@bmangobajito), is from Venezuela and she made the most perfect arepas – feather light but hearty enough to soak up a few wines from the night before.” You can find her arepas recipe here.

WELLINGTON

1  Fifty Years A Feminist by Sue Kedgley (Massey University Press, $40)

Blurb: “In this direct, energetic and focused autobiography, Kedgley tracks the development of feminism over the last five decades and its intersection with her life, describing how she went from debutante to stroppy activist, journalist, safe-food activist and Green politician.”

2  Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

3  The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw (Vintage, $38)

4  From the Centre: A Writer’s Life by Patricia Grace (Penguin, $40)

The brand new memoir from Patricia Grace – one of Aotearoa’s favourite writers, and legendary for being the first Māori woman to publish a short story collection.

In two separate sessions at the Auckland Writers Festival Grace made a point about pushing back on that “first” label and the problem, in general, of asserting “firsts”. Grace noted that Jacquie Sturm was writing before she was, and had once “ticked her off” about it. She wanted to acknowledge Sturm, other Māori writers, and her own tīpuna, who composed waiata that are still performed today.

5  Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber, $37)

6  Vunimaqo and Me: Mango Tree Collections by Daren Kamali (Kava Bowl Media, $20)

A new poetry collection based on the author’s childhood in Suva, Fiji. Per the publisher, his work “[channels] the many voices and the stories of those who found connection and shelter by the mango tree.” 

7  The Alarmist by Dave Lowe (Victoria University Press, $40)

Young glaciologist Clarrie Macklin wrote about The Alarmist this week on The Spinoff:

“It amazes me to read about Lowe chatting to people about climate issues at student parties in the 1960s and 70s. In murky student flats on our somewhat remote Pacific island, he talked about what would eventually become the most discussed environmental catastrophe to face humankind. Yet, when he brings up carbon in the atmosphere, people simply have no idea what he’s on about.

In 2018, when I was doing my thesis, people knew exactly what I was talking about. At parties, my glacier chats earned me the title of Ice Man, Mr Ice Cold, or simply Dr Freeze. People would ask, ‘Hey, how are those glaciers doing?’ To which I’d say, ‘Aw, yeah, a bit melty, actually.’ ‘Oh. How fucked are we?’ they’d ask, casually anticipating Earth’s collapse.”

8  Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press, $25)

People ask Google, “Is Hamnet based on a true story?” Yes. “Did Hamnet die of Plague?” Spoilers! Simply couldn’t say. “Is Hamnet a good book?” Good enough to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction, loiter on the bestsellers list for months, and make one Goodreads reviewer call it “an absolute must read” – bold included. 

9  Aroha: Māori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with our Planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)

10  Unsheltered by Clare Moleta (Simon & Schuster, $35)

Clare Moleta wrote an essay for us about what drove her to write her novel:

“They kept me awake at night, those vanished kids. There were too many of them to hold onto. The idea of them was overwhelming, numbing, until I decided to try to bring one child into focus. And in the grief of the loss of that one child, I found the question that came to haunt the rest of the book: how to be a parent when you’ve lost faith in the future.”

Next week we’ll also have an appreciation of Unsheltered, by one Elizabeth Knox.