With Heart and Nerve and Sinew: Post-Coup Writing from Fiji

• Published in: The Contemporary Pacific 1999, Vol.11 (2), p.487-490
• Main Author: TAWAKE, SANDRA
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cartoons; Conversation; Coup d'état; Coups d'etat; Diary; Fiji; Native rights; Oil painting; Pacific Region; Photography; Poetry; Poisoning; Politics; Press; Prime ministers; Reported speech; Stories; Truth
• ISSN: 1043-898X; 1527-9464

Griffen's With Heart and Nerve and Sinew is a collection of poems, stories, essays, letters, speeches, excerpts from diaries, copies of newspaper and journal articles and letters to the editor, photographs, color reprints of oil paintings, a play, personal reflections, an editorial cartoon, an editorial, and a transcript of a taped conversation among a panel prompted by the question "Where were you on the day of the coup?" Griffen says in the preface that the entire collection represents an attempt to bear witness to changes in the lives of the contributors that have occurred following the first military coup in the Fiji Islands on 14 May I987. The final outcome of the commission and its success or failure cannot yet be assessed, but Lal's account of the process from his position as a member is a fascinating and insightful one that reveals again how much the basis for political and ethnic divisions in Fiji is shifting ground. Jane Ricketts's snippets from her diary-in the form of dated statements or comments or questions attributed to individuals and followed by her own response to each quotation-reveal the anguish of a woman who has lived in Fiji for thirty years, has been married to a Fiji citizen for most of that time, and who must on the occasion of the coup work through disillusionment, rejection, and a consciousness that what had seemed solid and secure was in truth shifting sand. Konai Thaman's poem "Letter to the Colonel" creates the image of a cup of kava that is offered to the army colonel, who-with his troopshad arrested the prime minister-elect and his cabinet.