Steven Winduo, on rivers as metaphors

 “Rivers stand as a text for me, and it is up to me to read what is inscribed on the surface, beneath it, and along it.”

- Steven Winduo, on rivers as metaphors

Papua New Guinean poet, writer, and scholar Steven Edmund Winduo is a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea. An author of multiple poetry and short story collections, Winduo proposed new conceptual frameworks and writing strategies in Pacific literature and expanded representations of Oceanians, especially in Melanesia. This work is so important because, as Dr. Tarcisius Kabutaulaka has written:

“While negative representations of Melanesia linger in the shadows of scholarly and popular discourses, Melanesians are proactively trying to shed the ‘ignoble savage’ image and aspire for ‘a place in the sun.’”

- Dr. Tarcisius Kabutaulaka (2015)

To continue challenging representations of Pacific Islanders in literature and other forms, we invite submissions for proposals for our upcoming CPIS Student Conference on April 11, 2022.

Please submit proposals at: http://go.hawaii.edu/nuV (link is case sensitive) before next week on March 15, 2022 at 10pm HST.

Photo: Steven Winduo in our Teaching Oceania Series Vol. 7, Pacific Studies: A Transformational Movement. (Enomoto et al. 2021, 19).

Teaching Oceania Series Vol. 7, Pacific Studies: A Transformational Movement is available to download on Scholarspace: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/81452.

Kabutaulaka, T. (2015). Re­Presenting Melanesia: Ignoble Savages and Melanesian Alter­Natives. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/38767.