Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard


Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard is a Samoan writer and Associate Professor of Pacific literature at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She is also a poet.

Biography

Sinavaiana-Gabbard was born in Utulei village, Tutuila, American Samoa. She is Mike Gabbards sister, and Tulsi Gabbard aunt. In 2010 she lived in the Mānoa Valley in Honolulu.

Education

She completed her bachelor's degree at Sonoma State University, her Masters at the University of California, Berkeley, and her PhD at the University of Hawai'i.

Career

Sinavaiana-Gabbard's critically acclaimed poetry and scholarship have appeared in national and international journals and her book of poetry - Alchemies of Distance - was published in 2002. The text weaves between prose and verse and communicates a search for a Samoan identity and path of development within a modern colonized world. In his review of Alchemies of Distance, Craig Santos Perez asserts that this text "transforms the distances of time, culture, memory, and migration into a poetry of witness" New Zealand-based Samoan writer and poet Albert Wendt describes Sinavaiana-Gabbard's voice as "a new blend of Samoan, American, and widely ranging poetic and philosophical languages. A unique, vibrant, undeniable voice which shapes the now fearlessly with profound understanding and forgiveness".