Postcolonial Fictions
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SPAN
Journal of the South Pacific
Association for Commonwealth
Literature and Language Studies
Number 36 (1993)Edited by Michèle Drouart
Poem: Karma
Kapal Tipoti I'd been there. I'd been one of them, looking, whispering, thinking they were kolai because they'd been to the city. We thought they were too good now, and yet we thought our girls were city "prostitutes." We thought lots of things and we looked at them and we whispered to each other of them - from across the road.
I kept thinking badly of them until, in a group, we began to talk, them first, of course. Then I knew they were not kolai, not "prostitutes" but students learning for themselves, for our people.
Now I am one of the others and people look at me, and whisper, and think I am kolai. My mother, my friends, my people do not want me, do not speak to me.
But before me I see my spirit then, now, in the future and I am alienated - always alone.
Postcolonial Fictions
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