Giving Birth To My Father

By Tusiata Avia

Giving birth to my Father is about learning to live with a loss that seems simply too heavy to bear.

First, Tusiata Avia tells the reimagined story- the one of how things should go, followed by the story of what realy happens as her father travels through his last days and into the arms of his tupu’aga, transformed. As the family gatehrs around him with their love and raw need, their suffering turns to storm clouds.

This is an extraordinarily  rich poetic work about grief and renewal that will rearrange its readers. Giving birth to my Father takes in a world of familyamd memory, including a sequence of poems about a much-loved brother as he faces a life-threatening injury. It is a book about ways of holding one another even after we are gone.