Bloody Woman is bloody good writing. It moves between academic, journalistic and personal essay. I love that Lana moves back and forward across these genres: weaving, weaving – spinning the web, weaving the sparkling threads under our hands, back and forward across a number of spaces, pulling and holding the tensions, holding up the baskets of knowledge. Tusiata Avia

This wayfinding set of essays, by acclaimed writer and critic Lana Lopesi, explores the overlap of being a woman and Sāmoan. Writing on ancestral ideas of womanhood appears alongside contemporary reflections on women's experiences and the Pacific.

These essays lead into the messy and the sticky, the whispered conversations and the unspoken. As Lopesi writes, 'Bloody Woman has been scary to write... In putting words to my years of thinking, following the blood and revealing the evidence board in my mind, I am breaking a silence to try to understand something. It feels terrifying, but right.' 

These acts of self-revelation ultimately seek to open up new spaces, to acknowledge the narratives not yet written, and the voices to come. 

Published by BWB

Print Publication: Nov 2021

About the Author

Lana Lopesi is an author, art critic, editor and multidisciplinary researcher based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Since 2012 Lana has published extensively on New Zealand art and culture in local and international publications including Metro magazine, the Pantograph Punch, Bulletin, Art New Zealand, the Spinoff, Paperboy, among many others. Her writing has also been included in books such as Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, Crafting Aotearoa (Te Papa Press) and Say Something: Jacqueline Fahey (Christchurch Art Gallery). In 2018 Lana published her debut book False Divides (BWB Texts) and in 2019 she co-edited the book Transits and Returns (Vancouver Art Gallery; Institute of Modern Art). 

Book cover art by Momoe i manu ae ala atea'e Tasker