The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists

by Anaïs Maurer

Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day for half a century, Pacific people have long been subjected to man-made cataclysm. Well before climate change became a global concern, nuclear testing brought about untimely death, widespread diseases, forced migration, and irreparable destruction to the shores of Oceania. In The Ocean on Fire , Anaïs Maurer analyzes the Pacific literature that incriminates the environmental racism behind radioactive skies and rising seas. Maurer identifies strategies of resistance uniting the region by analyzing an extensive multilingual archive of decolonial Pacific art in French, Spanish, English, Tahitian, and Uvean, ranging from literature to songs and paintings. She shows how Pacific nuclear survivors’ stories reveal an alternative vision of the instead of promoting individualism and survivalism, they advocate mutual assistance, cultural resilience, South-South solidarities, and Indigenous women’s leadership. Drawing upon their experience resisting both nuclear colonialism and carbon imperialism, Pacific storytellers offer compelling narratives to nurture the land and each other in times of global environmental collapse.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published April 19, 2024

Reviews

[bre · Rating 5 out of 5]

went into this cautiously since the author isn’t oceanian, but it was very obvious that the literature/ art in this book was compiled with actual intention to learn from pacific antinuclear & anti-imperial activists in the way it acknowledges the author’s positionality and very extensively credits all of the artists whose work it includes. it mainly serves as a translation and analysis for most of the works that are in french or oceanian languages. overall i really enjoyed how heavily it was grounded in pacific concepts & culture like spiral time & fusion between people and the land, while comparing western capitalism to indigenous community practices in regards to environmentalism. historical information on the impacts of western nuclear testing in the pacific is so neglected in academia, so i really appreciated the detail put into the background information going into the impact on multiple islands and the displacement & radiation exposure that people experienced. bonus for giving me lots of pacific art and literature recs

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book on the shelf of an exhibition about Pacific migration at the Shanghai Bund Fine Art Museum and took a photo so I could track down a copy later.

A beautiful book about the sustained nuclear tests carried out in the South Pacific. Some really useful concepts that articulated things I’ve long been wondering about: Isletism as a development within Orientalism to idealise, patronise and other Pacific peoples, as well as ‘annihilation racism’ or the tendency to talk about the Pacific islands as if they’re uninhabited.

I’d love to see a work that looks at and connects anti-nuclear movements across the Pacific and Asia