Fa’afafine Notes, On Tagaloa, Jesus, and Nafanua

Abstract

I am a mixed-blood Samoan painter and poet and fa’afafine. These notes are from wandering memory, and I send them to the dead, to Fa’asapa and Fa’amanu, with my love, my alofa. Tulou, tulou, tulou lava. The procedure being a separation of the prefix fa’a, meaning to cause or to be alike, and fafine, meaning woman. The overall being the position fafine and the action fa’a, and the position fa’a and the action fafine. 3. When I was a small boy in the Sāmoa Islands, my great-grandmother Fa’asapa showed me how to print and paint siapo cloth, which was women’s work. I walked on her strong thin legs to massage them while she told me of this and that. There is an anthropology tale that I often see told as though it were a matter of fact or research, that Samoan families without daughters choose one of their boy children to become fa’afafine for the expected duties. I have sisters and I wasn’t aware of being chosen to fulfill a role. I wanted to hang out with my great-grandmother and make siapo paintings, and iron clothes smooth with the flat iron from its small brazier of coals, and after stories sleep under her mosquito net in its halo of light from the kerosene lamp. That was my desire and choice, and she and my family in Sāmoa supported my will to be. The naming of fa’afafine accompanies the event of the person.