Queer Pacific mobilities

Translocal bodies in the poetry of Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Bibliographic Data

ID2179458
AuthorsMandy Treagus (0000-0002-8482-2938)
Year2021
Volume57
Issue4
Pages455-468
Publication date2021-07-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2021.1913796
OpenAlexW3167435494
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited11

In the poetry of Dan Taulapapa McMullin, the queer body is the decolonial weapon of choice. McMullin identifies as fa’afafine, and is an artist, poet, and film-maker from the Sāmoa Islands who now lives in the USA. In these poems, bodies are located in diverse places but are connected to their Sāmoan origins through story, practice, and memory. This article argues that McMullin’s depiction of a variety of genders, identities, and sexualities, linked with pre-Christian life, refutes the dominance of post-missionary reticence about the body as a source of celebration and belonging for Sāmoans. In poetic narratives, McMullin presents their protagonists in a range of roles: creating, caring, dancing, and being sexual amongst them. In foregrounding the body as both a tool of insurrection and a means of negotiating place, McMullin uses story as a fresh form of poetics while demonstrating the continuance of tradition in the diasporic present

Appropriation · Art · Depiction · Foregrounding · Human sexuality · Lesbian · Literature · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Queer · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy

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Open DOI