Valentina Viscardi
Dr. Ellis
10 March 2015
Travel
Literature
Tatau:
The Universal Legend
“I’m not going out with you if you
are wearing that out.”
There
he stood, my best friend and high school sweetheart outside my house waiting to
pick me up to go to school. He was
decked out in the most ridiculous get up.
A tacky windbreaker that had in big block letters, “GERMANY” under an even bigger German flag. His draw-string bag had the Imperial
Eagle. Even more ridiculous was the
little German flags on his custom yellow, black, and red shoes.
“You’ve
got to be kidding me, Andrew!” I thought, as he sincerely looked
dumbfounded. How could he not look in
the mirror and realized that this obsession has gone too far. “You’re
American! Why is everything Germany
this, Germany that? You are out of
control!”
He
reasoned that he was very prideful of his heritage, where he comes from. Although he is born in America, he felt
connected to his culture if he wore German memorabilia.
Belonging to a culture and fitting
into the community is represented by the decorations of the Pacific Island
tattoos. As exhibited in, Tatuing the Post-Colonial Body and The Cross of Soot, by Albert Wendt, the
tatau is more than a decoration; it is identity, the legend to the past, and
the representation of the cultural community.
The beauty behind the tattoos from
the Pacific Islands is that you don’t have to speak the language to
understand. It is inaudible. More importantly, everyone can recognize the
symbols and markings and understand. In,
The Cross of Soot, Wendt describes
himself as a boy having a strong admiration for the old man, who is portrayed
as a father figure in the text. After gaining knowledge that the old man is a
tattoo artist and inked Samasoni, he peaks interest in having a tattoo. Wendt, as most children often do, want to imitate
their elders. But, the tattoo becomes
more than just an attempt to be “one of the boys.” As Wendt describes it was, “as if he had
crossed from one world to another, from one age to the next” (20).
The boy, although younger in age,
does not experience a pain any different than the older men at the prison. The blood that seeps from underneath the
needle, is the same blood as his comrades, or as Wendt describes in, Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body, “when
you are tatuaing the blood, the self, you are reconnecting it to the earth,
reaffirming that you are earth, genetically and genealogically” (409). Thus, when the boy is encouraged to be brave
by Tagi when he grimaces through the pain,
he is connected through to his prison friends. He belongs, for pain and bravery are
universal feelings that each of those men have experienced before. Now even the boy along with the other men
stem from a common ground of pain, hurt, and courage. In addition, he can always look to that spot
on his hand and recall his experience.
Epeli Hau’ofa states in, Our Sea of Islands, that “smallness is a
state of mind” (31). Thus, a tatau is
not limited to the surface of the body.
It is through the blood. And out
from that blood seeps the hereditary blue print that had been passed down from
generations and generations. That blood
reaffirms the lines and crosses that the tattoo artist skillfully etches into
the skin to represent that. The tatau
connects history and family ties and is a visual representation of identity and
the journey throughout one’s life.
Although Andrew doesn’t wear (thank God!) his excessive Germany gear today, he may have been
on to something. He was searching for a
tangible connection to his culture. The
same connection that tatau not only strives for, but also repeatedly succeeds
in accomplishing.
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