Grace Mera Molisa

Who is Grace Mera Molisa?

Grace Mera Molisa was a ni-Vanuatu poet, writer, and political figure widely regarded as one of the Pacific's most important women writers of her generation. Born in 1946, she trained in journalism and public administration before becoming closely involved in the movement for Vanuatu's independence during the 1970s. After independence in 1980, she served as Political Advisor to the Prime Minister and to the Vanuatu government, a position that made her the first woman to hold ministerial-equivalent rank in the country. She used poetry to address colonialism, patriarchy, custom land rights, and the position of women in a rapidly changing Melanesian society, publishing collections including Black Stone (1983) and Colonised People (1987). Her verse combined sharp political critique with imagery drawn from ni-Vanuatu land and kastom life, and she became a leading voice for gender equity within a political culture still dominated by male chiefly authority. Molisa also worked to strengthen women's organisations in Vanuatu during and after the independence period. She died in 2002, remembered as a pioneering literary and political voice for ni-Vanuatu women.

Sources: Grace Mera Molisa, "Black Stone" (Mana Publications, 1983) · Michelle Keown, "Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania" (Oxford University Press, 2007)