Poetry
Civilized Girl
Jully Makini · 1981
Synopsis
Short poems, in English, about the lives of women in the Solomon Islands: the working mother, marriage, a world made for men, politics. The poem that gives the collection its title gives voice to a young woman who has taken up the fashions that came from the West, cheap perfume, high heels, tight trousers, straightened hair held in place by clips; her unease speaks of a lost identity. The tone is light and ironic, and the criticism targets westernisation accepted without examination.
Context
The collection appeared in 1981 in Suva, in the Fiji Islands, with the South Pacific Creative Arts Society, under the name of Jully Sipolo: a twenty-two-page booklet. It was her first book, written in the momentum of the 1980 workshop; two others followed, in 1986 and 2007. The poet Selina Tusitala Marsh studied the title poem in 2014 alongside a later poem: she reads in it an anticolonial protest, unruly girls who refuse stereotypes, and the female body as a figure of the Solomon Islands nation.
Who it is for
Short, rhythmic poems in English, directly accessible; no French translation of the collection has been found.
Prizes and reception
The title poem is set for Pacific students in the regional English examination, and critics read it as a satire of Westernisation.
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