The “Myth of Tusitala” in Samoa: R. L. Stevenson’s Presence in Albert Wendt’s Fiction

The legacy left by Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific is undeniable and still really strong, and it represents a priceless heritage and source of inspiration for many postcolonial writers of the area. The aim of the paper is to investigate the strong influence of Stevenson’s life in the Pacific on the imagery of the Samoan novelist Albert Wendt, trying to reread the relationship between the two authors through the analysis of Wendt’s literary production. Analyzing Albert Wendt’s Stevensonian references in Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree/Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) and The Mango’s Kiss (2003), I will argue that Stevenson’s image in Wendt’s texts could be seen as a sort of “totem” in the Freudian sense of the term, a symbol deeply related to the sacred and the figure of the forefather, but also the center of love and hatred for the Samoan community wherein the Scottish writer spent his last years from 1888 to 1894.