This innovative collection of essays explores the ways in which islands have been used, imagined and theorised, both by island dwellers and continentals. This study considers how island dwellers conceived of themselves and their relation to proximate mainlands, and examines the fascination that islands have long held in the European imagination.
The collection addresses the significance of islands in the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century, the exploration of the Pacific, the important role played by islands in the process of decolonisation, and island-oriented developments in...

When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us.' Reading the archive of early contact in Oceania against European traditions of thinking about intimacy and exchange, Vanessa Smith illuminates the traditions and desires that led Bougainville and other European voyagers to believe that the first word they heard in the Pacific was the word for friend. Her book encompasses forty years of encounters from the...

Seven Shades of Gay is a story about the evolutionary blossoming of a young girl whose sexual awakening and her involvement with her gender issues and her experiences with her gay friends begin at a young age. These are traced throughout her life including a marriage broken with gay practices to final closure with the creation of a gated community of gay friends who seek not only self-awareness and acceptance but also a safe haven of security where their world is blissfully complete.

The rainbow gender diversities are as different as the seven shades of gay-red, orange, yellow, green, blue,...