Paradoxically and ironically, it is Samoa (literally 'the centre') which is the centre, not just of the parents' lives and aspirations, but also from the Samoan point of view, it is the centre of the universe. As the boy sees it, (SRH, p. 40): 'Our whole life here is only a preparation for the grand return to our homeland. Their hopes and dreams all revolve round our return.'

African American critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1992: 315) has raised many questions about the nature of the relationship between centre and margin. Although novels such as those of Duff and Wendt may appear to trade on the margin, they use the currency of English. When they write in English using genres like the novel, which, despite its modernity, has its origin in Western literate traditions, indigenous writers leave themselves open to evaluation by Western critical standards, formulated in metropolitan centres such as London and New York rather than in Apia or Kingston, or even Auckland. If, however, these standards are used we must be fully conscious of their development against particular ideological assumptions rather than take them as neutral, objective and universally valid (see Mudrooroo 1990). Some of the negative critical evaluations of the works by indigenous writers of the Pacific are based on misunderstandings of the difficulties such authors face in integrating oral historical traditions into Western modes of narration in a distinctive way while remaining faithful to the cultural values which give meaning to these traditions.

Pakeha critic C. K. Stead, for example, invoked language in questioning Hulme's authenticity as a Maori author. In characterising The Bone People as a 'novel by a Pakeha which has won an award [The Pegasus Award for Maori Literature] intended for a Maori', Stead (1985: 104) points out that Hulme was not brought up speaking Maori. This demand for authenticity based on language rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the linguistic situation for many minority peoples, whose efforts to transmit their language have been undermined by policies of forced assimilation. An 1871 act prohibited Maori in schools. Even Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace, whose Maoriness does not seem to be questioned, speak English as their native language. Patricia Grace has argued for a national literature in English which includes the Maori point of view.

The novel as a genre constitutes a strategic site in the discourse of national identity. A number of scholars such as Anderson (1991) and Bhabha (1990) have discussed the ways in which nations may be brought into being through narration, thus attesting the critical role of written literature, in particular, the novel in the service of empire and nation. In Said's view (1993: 69), the novel and imperialism are unthinkable without one another. Authors such as Ihimaera, Grace, and Wendt are writing novels which validate an indigenous rather than a settler's view of history. Ihimaera's novel The Matriarch (1987), for instance, can lay a strong claim to being the novel of modern New Zealand, an epic validating a Maori version of nationhood, which threatens the very foundation and continuation of Pakeha rule in New Zealand. In his novel as well as in Albert Wendt's Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1978) local or vernacular histories of families stand for the colonial and post-colonial condition of the Maori and Samoan people respectively. While Frederick Jameson (1986: 69) has commented that Third World novels are 'necessarily allegorical' and should be read as 'national allegories', Third World literature has no monopoly on national allegory. The authors' choice of narrative voice and plot is to some extent dictated by the necessity to establish themselves as credible narrators of (family) history within their own cultures. Both authors also tell us that without acknowledgement and reinstatement of values authentic to the indigenous past, the modern nation-state rests on shaky foundations (Romaine 1997b). As in Joyce's Ireland, history has become a nightmare.

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