“Our stories could kill you”: Storytelling, healthcare, and the legacy of the “talking cure” in Patricia Grace’sBaby No-Eyes(1998) and Georgia Kaʻapuni McMillen’sSchool for Hawaiian Girls(2005)

Abstract

and her work is sponsored by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (http://wrocah.ac.uk/). Her thesis examines postcolonial representations of age and ageing in Aotearoa New Zealand and Caribbean fiction and film, and investigates how such representations can intervene in the discipline of gerontology and the newer field of ageing studies. She the current editorial assistant for Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings (http://www.movingworlds.net/) and Stand Magazine (http://www.standmagazine.org/). "'Our Stories Could Kill You'": Storytelling, Healthcare, and the Legacy of the "Talking Cure" in Patricia Grace's Baby No-Eyes (1998) and Georgia Ka'apuni McMillen's School for Hawaiian Girls (2005) The notion of indigenous intergenerational historical trauma, developed by Native American engagements with trauma studies, has influenced models of bicultural or multicultural healthcare in New Zealand and Hawai'i. These discourses are underpinned by beliefs that indigenous storytelling facilitates healing, a premise shared by postcolonial trauma scholarship dealing with Pacific literatures. This article questions underlyingand romanticizedarguments that M ori and Hawaiian storytelling is a healing process. It analyses the representation of oral rites in Patricia Grace's Baby No-Eyes (1998) and Georgia Ka'apuni McMillen's School for Hawaiian Girls (2005) to show how storytelling is re-envisioned as a potential rather than realized space of healing. It contends that the enduring legacy of the "talking cure" obscures issues of responsible telling and listening, intergenerational respect, and the role of silence in M ori and Hawaiian iterations of collective health and wellbeing. By reframing storytelling as a complex, precarious, and even dangerous route to health and wellbeing, these readings demonstrate how Pacific literatures might contribute to culturally sensitive and nuanced appraisals of the conditions of oral rites and its relationship to colonial trauma.