Decolonizing Grace: Samoan Women Confront Trauma and Abuse

Abstract:Contemporary Samoan writers confront colonizing, heteropatriarchal uses of Christianity and of Samoan culture that silence and justify abuse committed against girls, women, and fa'afafine (third-gender individuals). Lima Hansen's memoir, Grace Brought Me Here (2018), challenges her father's wielding of religion and Samoan culture to cloak family abuse and sexual violence. "As Pasifika women," she says, "we are taught to keep domestic violence issues quiet. Due partly to the shame it brings to our families and communities that we are part of." Her memoir provides a foundational book-length analysis of abuse. Without attacking any specific tradition, she calls out the way her father presents himself as a model Mormon elder to defend his assaults. This central investigation of Hansen's memoir is expanded with consideration of the short story, "Family Pride" (2021), in which Nicki Perese challenges a wedding in an unspecified contemporary church that covers up an uncle's sexual abuse of his niece, and Penina Ava Taesali's poems in Sourcing Siapo (2016), which critique the Catholic Church's abandonment of Taesali's mother when her parents divorce, leaving a young Taesali at the mercy of her stepfather's abuse. The texts document abuse experienced by women, girls, and disabled individuals who grow up in Samoa, or as immigrants in New Zealand or the United States. Their calls for transformation of gender inequities are echoed by those who work in many locations in Oceania to challenge family and sexual violence.