Black and Blue in the Pacific

Beyond In/Visible Tokens: Complicating Narratives of Blackness and Belonging at an Oceanic University

“…Their sense of belonging, collectively, highlights a slice of diversity among the Black students on campus, many of whom form communal ties through organized structures and departments; simultaneously, students feel that no space is safe for them to fully be. This highlights a different aspect of what Christina Sharpe (2016) compels us to question regarding how we live the afterlife of slavery in what Teresia Teaiwa (2017) refers to as a narrative of Blackness in the Pacific, one that compels us to address the legacies of race, enslavement, colonialism, and settler dynamics beyond continental frameworks.…”

Reading Bodies, Writing Blackness: Anti-/Blackness and Nineteenth-Century Kanaka Maoli Literary Nationalism

“…In 2017, for example, Teresia Teaiwa, of Kiribati and African American heritages, convened the forum "Black and Blue in the Pacific: Afro-Diasporic Women Artists on History and Blackness" in Amerasia Journal. 91 The forum' s contributors (Ojeya Cruz Banks, Joy Enomoto, Courtney-Savali Andrews, Alisha Lola Jones, and Teaiwa) center Black and Pacific women' s bodies and draw Afro-Diasporic connections across and between the Indigenous Pacific and global protest movements growing from events of violent, systemic racism, such as the development of Black Lives Matter following the 2013 Zimmerman acquittal for shooting Trayvon Martin and in 2014, the fatal police shooting in Ferguson of Michael Brown. The forum also asks readers to consider how these events inform Indigenous Pacific movements such as #OurIslandsAreSacred, and places these affinities within a larger narrative of how Indigenous peoples across the Pacific perceive and experience blackness.…”