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Life and Solitude In Easter Island.
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I am an Australian writer with a passion for all books about the South Pacific. Thirty years ago, I embarked on a two-year mission to the Kingdom of Tonga, and soon after, my job as a naturalist on cruise ships took me to many beautiful, fascinating, and often very remote island nations in that region. Nowadays, my jobs as a writer, scientist, high school teacher, and mother leave little room to navigate to that beautiful part of the world, but I continue to read whatever seems even slightly related to the South Pacific Theme. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This book evoked so many memories from my life in Tonga.
Prior’s humorous accounts of his travels in this island kingdom brought back to me the laidback lifestyle, the flexibility one needs to have when living and traveling in “Tongan Time”, the different foods, customs, and attitudes, and most of all, the friendliness of the people. Having been there myself, one thing was clear: Prior did experience the real Tonga.
And having visited several uninhabited islands there, I especially enjoyed the vivid descriptions of his breakaway to a deserted island, which was full of adventure, tropical bliss, and unexpected hiccups. Simply Tonga as it lives and breathes!
When Simon and Fiona embark on a quest to track down the Queen of Tonga, they have no idea they’ll end up marooned on a desert island.
No idea they’ll encounter an undiscovered tribe, rescue a drowning actress, learn jungle survival from a commando, and attend cultural ceremonies few Westerners have seen.
As they find out who hooks up, who breaks up, who cracks up, and who throws up, will they fulfil Simon’s ambition to see the queen, or will they be distracted by insomniac chickens, grunting wild piglets, and the easy-going Tongan lifestyle?
I am an Australian writer with a passion for all books about the South Pacific. Thirty years ago, I embarked on a two-year mission to the Kingdom of Tonga, and soon after, my job as a naturalist on cruise ships took me to many beautiful, fascinating, and often very remote island nations in that region. Nowadays, my jobs as a writer, scientist, high school teacher, and mother leave little room to navigate to that beautiful part of the world, but I continue to read whatever seems even slightly related to the South Pacific Theme. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Having lived with Polynesian people on remote islands for 17 months, I always wondered where they originally came from and how their fascinating culture evolved.
This book enlightened me as it beautifully describes how the earliest Polynesians reached these far-away islands with amazing seafarer skills but no written tradition or metal tools at hand. I came across this book when it won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and can only agree that it is very well-researched and written in an easy-to-understand way.
A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.
For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed…
I am an Australian writer with a passion for all books about the South Pacific. Thirty years ago, I embarked on a two-year mission to the Kingdom of Tonga, and soon after, my job as a naturalist on cruise ships took me to many beautiful, fascinating, and often very remote island nations in that region. Nowadays, my jobs as a writer, scientist, high school teacher, and mother leave little room to navigate to that beautiful part of the world, but I continue to read whatever seems even slightly related to the South Pacific Theme. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
When I first learnt that I would embark on a two-year expedition to Tonga, I knew nothing about that part of the world.
Theroux’s book brought it so much closer and opened up my eyes to many different aspects of the history and culture of South Pacific islands. I also admired Theroux for his endurance when he paddled his way from one island to the next.
The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly).
In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines.
Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and…
I am an Australian writer with a passion for all books about the South Pacific. Thirty years ago, I embarked on a two-year mission to the Kingdom of Tonga, and soon after, my job as a naturalist on cruise ships took me to many beautiful, fascinating, and often very remote island nations in that region. Nowadays, my jobs as a writer, scientist, high school teacher, and mother leave little room to navigate to that beautiful part of the world, but I continue to read whatever seems even slightly related to the South Pacific Theme. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
I read this book before we embarked on a two-year mission to Tonga, and it created in me a picture of the South Pacific that proved to be somewhat misleading – largely because I didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that it was set in the 1700s and on Tahiti, which is quite different from Tonga.
Nevertheless, it was worth reading. First, because it is still a thrilling story, even after so many years. And second, because little did I know that some months later I would travel on rickety rusty fishing boats to visit remote islands at roughly the same location where the mutiny on the Bounty had occurred about 200 years before me.
The version I read was published in 1980 (by Sir John D Barrow), but I recommend this version as it makes the topic more accessible. It is a piece of South Pacific history that…
The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's great epics - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before.
Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave. Under the leadership of Fletcher Christian most of the crew mutinied soon after sailing from Tahiti, setting Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen adrift in a small open boat.…
Why I chose to write about cold climates: I spent nearly seven years living in the North of Norway in the Sámi reindeer herding village called Guovdageaidnu, or Kautokeino in Norwegian. I cherish my time in that part of the world.
This is a little off-piste in that this isn’t exactly about cold climates; the main topic of Dodds Pennock’s book is about how Indigenous Americans discovered Europe. I first heard Dodds Pennock talk about her book at a lecture in London just a few months back and had to buy the book, which is a riveting account of the reverse migration of Indigenous Americans to Europe.
Why include this book on the Arctic, you ask? Dodds Pennock also writes about a few Indigenous Inuit that make it to England, and I haven’t stopped thinking about the story she tells about their fraught lives in the UK and (until now) unknown or forgotten history in England. For example, she tells a gripping story of two Inuits who were abducted and brought to London in the 1570s and are buried in the city in unmarked graves at St. Olave’s Church.
We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New', when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others - enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders - the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a…
I’m a scholar who has spent most of his working life looking at the history of North Africa. This passion was formerly directed toward looking at the conditions that Europeans imposed on local populations, but in recent times, I have moved solely to consider forgotten cultures made by indigenous Muslim and Jewish populations. Making this move has been the best, riskiest, and most rewarding choice I’ve ever made in my career, and I am now a cheerleader for the incredible forms of art made by ordinary people in these societies.
This was the book that convinced me that it is worthwhile exploring the past so as to rediscover and rethink works of art made by indigenous people living under imperial conditions.
I love its movement around the world, the close readings of works that no other scholars had ever considered, and the moral urgency that underpins every one of its lines.
It is often assumed that the verbal and visual languages of Indigenous people had little influence upon the classification of scientific, legal, and artistic objects in the metropolises and museums of nineteenth-century colonial powers. However colonized locals did more than merely collect material for interested colonizers. In developing the concept of anachronism for the analysis of colonial material this book writes the complex biographies for five key objects that exemplify, embody, and refract the tensions of nineteenth-century history. Through an analysis of particular language notations and drawings hidden in colonial documents and a reexamination of cross-cultural communication, the book writes…
I come from the Dusun hilltribes of Indigenous Borneo. My mountain is Kinabalu, and my river is Kiulu. My upbringing gives me a new way to talk about the world. I have participated in ongoing rituals, witnessed the loss of once-abundant wilderness, and shared in stories that are filled with ancient wisdom. My Elders’ knowledge about the land, sea, and sky is etched in my memory, grounding me to cultural roots and prompting reflection on life’s essential questions. In my travels, I have found that these universal questions intersect with the stories and experiences of Indigenous communities worldwide. This worldview urges me to not let these stories fade.
I clung to every word, every story, and every turn of phrase like a traveler gripping a well-worn map. Listening to the audiobook version narrated by Cherokee Nation writer Daniel Heath Justice, the stories unfolded, some like a quiet stream, urging me to pay closer attention, others rushing flyaway wild like the wind, gripping, inspiring, and wandering.
Tuning into the audiobook with my headphones on made my nature walks an immersive and contemplative experience I’d highly recommend. The questions posed about humanity challenge us to be better humans, and I was struck by the familiarity of the stories to my own culture.
I could read and listen to this book over and over again as the life lessons are so generously expressed and simply made me want more, more, more.
Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. In considering the connections between literature and lived experience, this book contemplates four key questions at the heart of Indigenous kinship traditions: How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? Blending personal narrative and broader historical and cultural analysis with close readings of key…
I’ve been a socialist for my entire adult life and a wise-ass for even longer. As a writer I’ve found a way to combine these two passions, using humor to introduce complex economic and political ideas to a new audience, as well as poke fun at politicians, CEOs, and even myself and my fellow activists. Not all of the books on this list use humor the way I do, but they have all helped me keep my sunny disposition by giving me inspiration that the socialist cause is more dynamic and multifaceted than ever.
The Red Nation is a revolutionary Indigenous organization that is part of the historic 21st-century revival of Indigenous culture and political resistance that has emerged across the Americas to block oil pipelines, prevent mining projects, and basically lead the fight to save us all from climate extinction. This is their manifesto.
The Red Deal engages with many of the ideas of the “Green New Deal” proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, but starts from the standpoint of Indigenous people across the world. As a result, it puts the fight against climate change in the context of 500 years of capitalism and colonialism, and makes an inspiring case why everyone who wants a sustainable economy should support Indigenous people’s fights for their land and freedom.
When the Red Nation released their call for a Red Deal, it generated coverage in places from Teen Vogue to Jacobin to the New Republic, was endorsed by the DSA, and has galvanized organizing and action.
Now, in response to popular demand, the Red Nation expands their original statement filling in the histories and ideas that formed it and forwarding an even more powerful case for the actions it demands.
One-part visionary platform, one-part practical toolkit, the Red Deal is a platform that encompasses everyone, including non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live on Indigenous land. We-Indigenous, Black and people of…
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
Two important messages underscoring this fascinating anarchist history of Southeast Asia's uplands are coming from the past and arriving from an uncertain future. The first message began 12,000 years ago when human settlements were established.
Slowly, friction emerged between lowlands people, who settled and started to acquire property, and nomadic people of the highlands. The more settlements developed, the more nomads were deemed a threat and destroyed. These conflicts are elemental to the history of war.
The current data on climate impacts I’ve read indicate that a significant percentage of the global population will be displaced in the coming decades. By becoming nomadic, they will again be deemed a threat to urban dwellers–hence the message: there’s another danger of war to avoid!
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized state society
For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvee labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an "anarchist history," is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates…
All of us bear the scars of emotional wounds, as complex psychology beats at the heart of all relationships. I’ve personally survived the betrayal of a parent, the loss of a child, emotional abuse, and life with an addict who could look me in the eye and lie. These themes resound in my stories. Literature is a safe place to explore and heal our own traumas through the dramatic interactions of our characters. My witch killer is not just “crazy” he’s unraveling a complex psychological past. In standing with our heroes as they meet and conquer evil, in its many guises, we find our way to healing our own trauma.
I read this book twice, cover-to-cover and back-to-back. First, to find out what happens to our feisty Métis hero, Joan of Arcand, and then again to savor Dimaline’s lyrical writing. When Mere (her grandmother) is murdered by a wolfish shape-shifting creature—a rogarou—we find ourselves trapped in a mythic Métis world. “A dog, a man, a wolf. He was clothed, he was naked in his fur, he wore moccasins to jig.” Carrying a ground-up salt bone for protection, Joan ventures into the Empire of Wildto slay the rogarou who killed Mere and reclaim her husband. Like her hero, Dimaline is brave and fearless, pouring history, politics, and religion into her cauldron, then stirring with a branch of magic realism and psychological terror. Dimaline is my hero.
A NO. 1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER One of the most anticipated books of the summer for Time, Harper's Bazaar, Bustle and Publishers Weekly
'Deftly written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!' Margaret Atwood
'Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive' Tommy Orange, author of There There
'Dimaline turns an old story into something newly haunting and resonant' New York Times
'An utterly compelling blend of propulsive narrative, starkly beautiful writing and passionate, near dysfunctional love' Daily Mail
