Bøker av Selina Tusitala Marsh

In the sequel to the bestselling Mophead, Selina is invited to read a poem for the Queen in Westminster Abbey. Someone at work calls her a 'sellout'. What will she do?

At school, Selina is teased for her big, frizzy hair. Kids call her 'mophead'. She ties her hair up this way and that way and tries to fit in. Until one day - Sam Hunt plays a role - Selina gives up the game. She decides to let her hair out, to embrace her difference, to be WILD!Selina takes us through special moments in her extraordinary life. She becomes one of the first Pasifika women to hold a PhD. She reads for the Queen of England and Samoan royalty. She meets Barack Obama. And then she is named the New Zealand Poet Laureate. She picks up her special tokotoko, and notices something. It has wild hair coming out the end. It looks like a mop. A kid on the Waiheke ferry teases her about it. So she tells him a story . . .This is an inspirational graphic memoir, full of wry humour, that will appeal to young readers and adults alike. Illustrated with wit and verve by the author - NZ's bestselling Poet Laureate - Mophead tells the true story of a New Zealand woman realising how her difference can make a difference.

Fast Talking PI reflects the poet's focus on issues affecting Pacific communities in New Zealand, and indigenous peoples around the world including the challenges and triumphs of being afakasi [mixed race]. The book is structured in three sections, Tusitala (personal), Talkback (political and historical) and Fast Talking PIs (dialogue).

Fast Talking PI is the first 'singular, confident and musical' collection of poetry by Auckland writer Selina Tusitala Marsh. 'Tusitala' means writer of tales in Samoan, and Marsh here lives up to her name with stories of her life, her family, community, ancestry, and history. Her poetry is sensuous and strong, using lush imagery, clear rhythms and repetitions to power it forward. The list poem is a favourite style, but she also writes with a Pacific lyricism entirely her own. Fast Talking PI is structured in three sections, 'Tusitala (personal), 'Talkback' (political and historical) and 'Fast Talking PI' (already a classic). In poems like 'Guys Like Gauguin' she writes as a 'calabash breaker', fighting back against historic injustices; but in other poems she explores the idea of the calabash as the honoured vessel for identity and story. Ultimately, though, Marsh exhorts herself to 'be nobody's darling', as a writer she is a self-proclaimed 'darling in the margins', and Fast Talking PI proves it - a generous work that will thrill readers; 'a map in our arms / to get us over the reef'; and a tremendous first book.