Sons for the Return Home

Albert Wendt is an acclaimed Samoan-born novelist and poet. Wendt is of German heritage through his great-grandfather from his patrilineal ancestry. This heritage is reflected in a number of his poetry works. Wendt won a scholarship to study in New Zealand in 1952 at New Plymouth Boys High School. After finishing high school Wendt studied at Ardmore Teacher's Collage and then graduated from Victoria University with a Masters degree in History. His Masters' thesis was about the Mau, Samoa's independence movement from colonialism during the early 1900s and was titled Guardian and Wards: A study of the origins, causes and the first two years of the Mau in Western Samoa. Wendt returned home to Samoa in 1965 to teach at Samoa College, and then in 1969 he became the principal of the institution. In 1974 he moved to Suva, Fiji, where he became a lecturer at the University of the South Pacific. He returned home once again in 1977 to set up the University of the South Pacific Centre in Samoa. Wendt took up a professorship of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, where he taught New Zealand and Pacific literature from 1988 to 2006, becoming one of the first Samoan and Pacific Island professors in New Zealand. Wendt has written several novels, collections of short stories and poetry. Two of his books, Sons for the Return Home and Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree - have both been made into feature films. Leaves of the Banyan Tree, his third novel, won the prestigious New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award in 1980. Wendt is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland and continues his writing and painting full-time. He has edited a number of important anthologies and continues to play a major role in fostering and promoting Pacific literature.

Sons for the Return Home is a simple but beautiful story about star-crossed lovers. It spotlights the complex nature of love, freedom, and racism in New Zealand. Written in simple sparse language in 1967 the book follows the journey of a Samoan family that migrate to Wellington, New Zealand in the 1960s.

The two main characters are never actually given names and are referred to as "he" and "she" throughout, "He" is a Samoan and "she" is a Palangi. I think Wendt was looking for objectivity and distance between his characters and by using their relationship as a background, issues of race, racism and cultural identity are effectively explored. While the absence of names works for the novel, it is interesting to note that all characters are given names in the 1978 movie version of Sons for the Return Home. 

The story is full of fascinating relationships. The relationship between the young man and his girlfriend is charged, similar to the relationship between the young man and his mother. In Samoan matriarchal society the mother has the ultimate power. The young male protagonist has a conflicted relationship with her because she wants the best for him, however only on her terms. The young male does not know whether he wants to stay in New Zealand or go somewhere else, whereas the mothers entire plan is that the family make enough money to go back to Samoa rich. For the mother, life in New Zealand is temporary; the family were always planning to return to Samoa with financial security. They do in fact return to Samoa, where, of course they are now foreigners. They have lived in New Zealand for the last ten years. They struggle because of this, to find the connection they thought they had with Samoa.

I think one of the books most important scenes within the novel is the scene in which the protagonist's father sees two crewmen having sex in a lifeboat. To me, it seems like this scene puts a wedge in the fathers mind between the promise land he thought he was coming to and other issues that he has. It highlights the fact that prejudice goes both ways. This is evident later on in the book when the male protagonist goes to meet his girlfriend's parents. When he arrives, he's ready and waiting for their prejudice, however what surprises him, is the fact that his own family are just as prejudice towards her. The books plays with the idea of inners and outers, people who matter and people who don't matter. The young male's mother is extremely prejudiced towards Palangi, She doesn't want them in her family, however at the same time, she wants the legitimacy that having Palangi friends will give them.

I had a lot of compassion for the books main character. Because he drives much of the story, it was hard not to identify with him. The book was written in a very limited perspective and there was not a lot of interior monologue surrounding the protagonist. Wendt has written the story in such a way that the reader is left to guess a lot of his motivations. I think Wendt allows us to assess the interior by what he displays exteriorly in his dialogue and in his actions. Because of this I was able to make assumptions about why he did what he did and why he said what he said. The book was a stark contrast to other novels where the main character is constantly thinking on the page. So often in other novels the main character is telling us how he/she is feeling and what he/she thinks, whereas, Sons for the Return Home required a lot of reader input.