Author(s): Lana Lopesi

Politics | Gender & Sexuality | Sociology | Essay | The Pacific | Aotearoa New Zealand Non-Fiction

This wayfinding set of essays, by acclaimed writer and critic Lana Lopesi, explores the overlap of being a woman and Sāmoan. Writing on ancestral ideas of womanhood appears alongside contemporary reflections on women's experiences and the Pacific. These essays lead into the messy and the sticky, the whispered conversations and the unspoken. As Lopesi writes, 'Bloody Woman has been scary to write... 'In putting words to my years of thinking, following the blood and revealing the evidence board in my mind, I am breaking a silence to try to understand something. It feels terrifying, but right.'  These acts of self-revelation ultimately seek to open up new spaces, to acknowledge the narratives not yet written, and the voices to come. 

'Bloody Woman gives voice to my lived experience, to the overlooked, to the underrepresented and to the exceptionally complex, multifaceted and contradictory experience of being a woman.'

This wayfinding set of essays explores the overlap of being Sāmoan and a woman, as experienced 'from diaspora', by acclaimed writer and critic Lana Lopesi. Writing on ancestral ideas of womanhood appears alongside contemporary reflections on women's experiences and the Pacific. These often deeply personal essays amount to a complex, rich and multi-layered book.  

Playful, speculative and far-sighted, these essays are written to support 'the narratives not yet written' and the new generations to come. As Lopesi writes, 'I hope that in the simple act of articulating something, I will both open space and leave room for others to tell their stories in their way.' With the world confronting fresh questions of gender, race and identity, Bloody Woman opens up new horizons for thinking and writing in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.