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Cargando... Puka-Puka (1948)por Johnny Frisbie
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Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka (2nd edition) by Florence (Johnny) Frisbie is the first book written by a Polynesian woman. It tells the amazing story of a young girl growing up on a remote island in the Cook Islands group. Written when Johnny was between the ages of 12 and 14, and published in 1948 when she was 15, Johnny likens her travels through South Pacific islands to those of Ulysses in the Odyssey. Through Johnny's fresh and unspoiled eyes, we read of a Garden-of-Eden existence on a remote atoll, where the land and the sea provide all that is necessary for life. The sea brings danger as well; Johnny describes the terror of a hurricane that all but destroys a deserted island where she and her family are marooned. The sea rises and floods the entire island to a depth of six feet; they barely survive by tying themselves to the topmost branches of a tall tree. Johnny's writing sparkles. She has humor and wisdom beyond her years as she describes life and customs on the island where she grew up. Her grandmother's extended family, the trading station operated by her father, the local witch doctor, a native missionary, her father's mistress after the death of her mother, and her first boyfriend are among the characters she describes with unflinching honesty. Cut off from the outside world, the island is so remote that six months pass between visits by passing ships. She learns at an early age to be self-reliant. Struck early by tragedy (her mother died when Johnny was nine years old), she helps her father care for four brothers and sisters until he falls ill and dies when she is sixteen. Friends including James A. Michener arrange a foster family in Hawaii where she pursues her education and re-unites with her two sisters. Out of print for more than sixty years, Johnny has added two new chapters to this classic and compelling book and illustrated it with family photos and three maps. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)996.23History and Geography Oceania and elsewhere Polynesia South central Pacific islands Cook IslandsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Initially, I was most interested in this autobiography for another reason. Having read some of RDF's works about his life in Polynesia, I was intrigued with how his young daughter would describe some of the same events. What perspective would she take? Would she illuminate anything special?
The answer to those questions was an unexpected one. For Johnny most illuninated a side of RDF that I had not seen in his own writings or writings about him by others. Johnny depicts a man desperate to carry out his late wife's last commandment: to keep the family together. This, despite conflicts with Polynesian relatives who wanted to adopt the children, his poverty, and his ongoing weakened health--RDF suffered from tuberculosis.
When RDF describes himself in his writing, he never really lets on about his financial and health fears as much as Johnny does in Miss Ulysses. But he does occasionally question himself about putting his family in physical danger--something hidden from the children until the gravest danger of all manifests itself, the enormous hurricane that nearly kills them all on Savarrow Island. Meanwhile, RDF's close friend, confident, and supporter, James Norman Hall, when he wrote about RDF, every now and then tended to describe him not only as an eccentric but a bit of a ne'er-do-well forever chasing after a dream he was not really matched to meet--becoming a great novelist. There was a touch of the comic attached to RDF. For Johnny, it was much more a touch of the tragic that dwelt within her father.
Johnny Frisbie has lived a long and adventuresome life. Perhaps it is to make up for so many of the tragedies that afflicted her and her family early on. There was the death of her mother, Nga, at a young age and, then, less than ten years later, the death of her father, RDF, when she was 16 years-old. Immediately thereafter, the family was separated, although subsequently mostly reunited. For this edition, there is an epilogue that does not appear in the first edition. In it, the 85 year-old Johnny summarizes the fate of the family and gives insight into her own perseverance, as she looks back over time to the death of her father 70 years ago, now. ( )