ABSTRACT
This chapter offers instructors unfamiliar with Oceania possible approaches to examining Oceanian women’s works that introduce students to a region of the “Francosphere” whose literature is burgeoning. It proposes for primary readings, secondary reading materials, theoretical approaches, and in-class activities to facilitate the inclusion of Oceanian women’s literature in the Francophone literature and culture classroom. The chapter provides an upper-level course on Francophone literatures and cultures and in courses focused exclusively on the Oceanian region. It discusses the inclusion of Ari’irau Richard-Vivi’s daring Matamimi, ou La vie nous attend in a graduate seminar taught in the Spring of 2017. Ari’irau’s eponymous narrator interweaves memories of her own childhood, historical events such as nuclear testing and independence protests, and Tahitian oral stories into a novel that is, like the character of Matamimi, fiction. The author, who prefers to be referred to simply as Ari’irau, is the daughter of a Frenchman and a half-Tahitian woman.
