An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific
English
By (author): Alexander Casey Elizabeth Ua Ceallaigh Bowman Marie Alohalani Brown Mhealani Ahia Michael Lujan Bevacqua Ra`i Chaze Sarahina Sabrina Birk
Wonder is activated by curiosity, humility in the face of mystery, and engagement with possibilities. We see wonder and the fantastic as general modes of expression that arenot confined to realism. As such, the fantastic encompasses fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, fabulation, horror, fairy tale, utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction. We include Black, feminist, and queer futurisms, Indigenous wonderworks, Hawaiian moolelo kamahao and moolelo iwaiwa, Smoan fgogo, and other non-mimetic genres from specific cultures, because we recognize that their refusal to adopt restrictive Euro-American definitions of reality is whatinspires and enables the fantastic to flourish.
As artistic, intellectual, and culturally based expressions that encode and embody Indigenous knowledge, the multimodal moolelo in this collection upend monolithic, often exoticizing, and demeaning stereotypes of the Pacific and situate themselves in conversation with critical understandings of the global fantastic, Indigenous futurities, social justice, and decolonial and activist storytelling.In this collection, Oceanic ideas and images surround and connect to Hawaii, which is for the three coeditors, a piko (center); at the same time, navigating both juxtaposition and association, the collection seeks to articulate pilina (relationships) across genres, locations, time, and media and to celebrate the multiplicity and relationality of the fantastic in Oceania. See more