From the Bookshelf of Around the World…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
Where We Once Belonged adapts the participative Samoan storytelling form of su'ifefiloi to tell the story of Alofa Filiga, an adolescent girl navigating Samoan society and the treacherous waters of near-adulthood. Su'ifefiloi means a woven garland of flowers. As a narrative technique, it refers to the stringing together of individual stories or episodes, each separate and unrelated like flower blossoms, but coming together to create a cohesive whole. In Where We Once Belonged, unlike in a tradit
...more
Last year, I read Albert Wendt's Leaves of the Banyan Tree and I cannot help but feel like these two books belong together. Where Wendt's book focusses on the trials and tribulations of several generations of men through much of the 20th century, Figiel's book takes off where Wendt's chronicle stops: both in terms of time (late 20th century), and by putting the female experience in a small Samoan community center stage.
I love Figiel's prose and way of storytelling and I'll definitely try to find ...more
I love Figiel's prose and way of storytelling and I'll definitely try to find ...more
Where We Once Belonged is the tale of a Samoan girl coming of age in her small town. It is a story of family, of community mores, of gender politics, of island life. The book weaves Samoan language into the English narrative. In the back of the book there is a dictionary that translates some of the words, but by no means all. As a non-Samoan speaker, I found this both helpful--I loved to hear the music of the language and the ways that English morphed into new Samoan vocabulary in the mouths of
...more
I read this for my travels around the world in books: Samoa. But I didn't really hit it off with this book and was disappointed. It doesn't really go anywhere; too many different stories with a confusing cast. I couldn't keep all the characters clear in my memory and then stopped caring about them. One or two of the stories is interesting; the one that grabbed me most was the story of the trans person but most of the other tales I can't even now recall. Also the stories are peppered with Samoan
...more
Sep 08, 2009
Ching-In
marked it as to-read
Feb 04, 2012
Sarah
marked it as to-read
May 27, 2013
Julia
marked it as to-read
Mar 28, 2017
Crystal Chow
marked it as to-read
Feb 14, 2018
Kavitha
marked it as to-read
Aug 21, 2020
Christelle
marked it as wishlist
Dec 31, 2023
Melissa
marked it as to-read
