Searching for Nei Nim`anoa

This collection of writings chronicles my search for emotional and intellectual roots. But given the mixed nature of my identity, it has been a project marked by frequent displacements and replacements, detours and retours. The convergency of my father's Banaban and Gilbertese history and my mother's African American heritage has produced a peculiar cultural, linguistic, and symbolic map for me.

Nei Nim'anoa, a figure from Gilbertese mythology, symbolizes for me this sense of rootedness and routedness. Descending from the tree of life, she charted a course from Samoa to Tungaru (the Gilberts), and bequeathed a wonderful voyaging tradition to her descendents. Nei Nim'anoa is partiucalrly remarkable as one of only a few female figures in the male-dominated field of Pacific Island navigational traditions.