Sia Figiel

Occupation: Author, poet

Hometown: Apia, Capital of the Independent State of Western Samoa! Ha!

Now living: Pago Pago, American Samoa

Became interested in the arts: 1973 – at Primer One – ‘O le polo ‘e lapotopoto… not to mention my acting premiere as Salome on White Sunday shortly thereafter.

Favourite artist: Measha Brueggergosman – that girl is divine!

Favourite group: Not a groupie. But if you insist, Early Punialava’a, Tiama’a, Penina o le Ti’afau and recently Black Rose, Fiji Rules!

Favourite song: You’re so vain by Carly Simon

Favourite book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Favourite Pacific food: Faiai Fe’e – that’s Octopus in coconut milk – so the bomb!

Favourite tradition: Lighting the Christmas tree. The greatest kick here is not watching my kids but my kids watching me light up along with the tree. It’s a special treat!

Brief history

Sia Figiel is often described as Samoa’s first contemporary woman novelist.

Her first novel Where We Once Belonged (1996), won the Best First Book award in the South East Asia/South Pacific region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1997. She has published two other novels, The Girl in the Moon Circle (1996) and They Who Do Not Grieve (1999).

Sia has also published a book of prose poetry, To a Young Artist in Contemplation (1998), and TERENESIA, a CD of performance-poetry with the poet Teresia Teaiwa (2000). Her poetry won the 1994 Polynesian Literary Competition.

Sia talks to Pacific Starmap…

What are you working on at the moment?

A memoir of my mother.

How did you first get into your art? What influenced you to do this?

There were no female Samoan narratives at the time. And because of this, I decided to write.

What are your next big goals?

Lose a 100lbs. I was diagnosed with diabetes six years ago and it has been a struggle. My biggest goal is to be able to control my glucose levels without medication. My nine-year-old is my Personal Trainer. He’s tough! We walk in the evenings and he runs before me and yells, “Come on Mami, you can do it!”

I believe him! I have no choice!

When did you know a career in the arts was for you?

Really early on, as a fifth former at Rutherford.

I had just read Albert Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home and loved it. That first contact with literature written by a Samoan was powerful. I even tried mimicking him. This is the first time I’m admitting to that. Ha!

So when I met other people who were equally influential later on in life, the seeds were already sowed and I was already excited about the possibility of being a writer.

Who were/are your influencers and why?

Mainly my great aunt Mary Tuputala. I’ve been citing her throughout the years as my influence but interestingly enough it’s not until this interview that I’ve paid attention to her name – it means ‘the origin of stories’. Isn’t that fantastic?

Fagogo storytelling is the main thrust behind my art in addition to reading and discovering the voices of female writers who liberated me from the shadow of the Western canon – in particular, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros. But always, there’s Albert Wendt’s work that lingers in the background.

How much support did you have at the beginning of your career?

Basically none. I mean, very little. There was no support from my family and I attribute that to the fact that being a writer or poet was not quite the same as being, say, a doctor or a lawyer. But that reflects my own parents’ understanding of education at the time. You go to school to train to become a doctor and you can just be a poet without going to school.

So, me returning after my B.A. wanting to be a poet instead, was seen as a waste. I can fully appreciate that now. I didn’t then. And it was that friction that actually lead to the creation of some of the central characters in my work – Siniva in Where We Once Belonged, for instance.

My greatest support of course came from meeting Epeli Hau’ofa in 1994 at a Literary Conference at the University of Hawai’i. He was the force behind my residency at the Center for PI Studies and the PI Development Program at the East-West Center.

Then a whole array of people conspired to ensure I finished ‘the book’… whose names I can’t possibly list. Needless to say, I was very lucky to have one of our most senior writers behind me. Every young artist needs that kind of support and I am grateful to Epeli for being there for me. Malo aupito!

Sia will answer more questions on Pacific Starmap in coming months, so join our email list to be the first to know when she is our featured Champion.

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