As a follow-up to my recent post about Asian American historical fiction for AAPI Heritage Month in the U.S., I now want to focus on Pacific Island historical fiction. The Pacific Islands comprise three major ethnogeographic groups according to Britannica: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The term does leave out several significant islands located in the Pacific Ocean, including Australia, and sometimes the term Oceania is used to include the area more broadly. These are the Pacific Islands as listed out by the AAPI Heritage Month website:
“Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).”
While I couldn’t find an English-language historical fiction novel from every Pacific Island (or even close to it, really), the nine novels featured below span numerous islands and cultures th...
English (US)