Ward, Kathleen Fromm

Dr. Kathleen Fromm Ward has roots in both the Pacific Northwest and Hawai'i. Her Ph.D. is in American Studies, and she is now Professor of International Cultural Studies at Brigham Young University-Hawai'i.

Narratives and Images of Pacific Island Women

2005 0-7734-6184-1
Winner of the Adele Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship

While oral narratives and feminist scholarship have merged in recent years, literally giving voice to women from cultures around the world, the voices of Pacific Island women have been largely absent. This volume begins to bring their lives and perspectives into the expanding discourse on the Pacific and on contemporary women and their cultures.

The work is a collection of interviews and photographs gathered in an extensive women's oral history project funded by Brigham Young University- Hawai'i. The selected narratives include indigenous women from Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Hawai'i, Kiribati, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga. They establish significant distinctions and commonalities among Pacific Island women and also between island women and those outside the Pacific.