Pina
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- $169.00
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- $169.00
Descripción editorial
Winner of the 2017 Eugène Dabit Prize
Winner of the 2019 French Voices Grand Prize
From award-winning Tahitian author Titaua Peu comes Pina, a devastating novel about a family torn apart by secrets and the legacy of colonialism, held together by nine-year-old Pina, a girl shouldering the immeasurable weight of her family’s traumas.
Far from Tahiti’s postcard-perfect beaches, Ma and Auguste and five of their nine children live a hand-to-mouth life in destitute, run-down Tenaho. Nine-year-old Pina, abused and neglected in equal measure, is the keeper of her family’s secrets, though the weight of this knowledge soon proves to be a burden no child could ever bear.
A victim of her father’s alcoholic rages and the object of her mother’s anger and indifference, Pina protects her younger sister, Moïra, as best she can, but a tragic accident upsets the precarious equilibrium of the family, setting them on a path to destruction. The fault lines of her family, descendants of Mā’ohi warriors who once fended off European settlers, begin to shift and crack open, laying bare how the past shapes and haunts the present: her brother Pauro falls in love with a Frenchman, her sister Rosa sinks into sexual exploitation as a futile means of escape, her eldest brother August Junior’s addictions and temper may lead him into ruin, and Hannah, the oldest daughter who had escaped to France, is beckoned back home, fearing the worst.
Elegantly translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, Pina introduces a bold and profoundly humane anticolonial writer. It’s a gut punch of a novel that traces the history of a family, an island, and a people, reaching back to a time before colonial rule and stretching into an imagined, hopeful future of independence and autonomy, offering the promise of redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peu's English-language debut harnesses a chorus of voices from her native Tahiti, a paradise only in the minds of non-natives. Pina is the second to last of nine children born in the downtrodden community of Tenaho. Ridiculed at school for being poor, Pina is neglected and abused by her indifferent, angry mother and alcoholic father, Auguste, and tries to protect her baby sister and teenage brother Pauro, who has fallen in love with a Frenchman. The precarious family balance is shattered as Auguste becomes unhinged after recovering from a car accident in which a woman is killed. Told at first from Pina's perspective, the narrative gathers a violent and blood-soaked momentum as it focuses alternately on Pina's parents and siblings in successive chapters. The family, descendants of island warriors who opposed European expansion, serves as a vehicle for a fierce message about the destructive nature of colonial oppression and the potential for change. While the many points of view somewhat diminish the suspense concerning Pina's fate, Peu does a lovely job making their voices resonate. This evocative and layered story is a treat.
