Excerpt from an autobiographical chapter by Shevon Matai published in Samoan Queer Lives

Paradise Camp (2021) explores the Faʻafafine experience including struggles and triumphs that comes with being part of Samoan culture, laws and customs. The following text by Shevon Matai is an excerpt from her autobiographical chapter published in Samoan Queer Lives edited by Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara published by Little Island Press (NZ) in 2018.

Published with the permission of Shevon Matai and Fernandez Matai.

Shevon Matai

My birth name is Solipo Kaio Matai and that’s my family name from my mum’s side. My mum’s Vaosa and she’s from Vaimoso and Fagatogo. And my dad is Muaimalae Kaio Matai, he’s from Satitoa Aleipata and Satupaitea, Savai`i. I was born here in American Sāmoa and grew up in Fagatogo.

Fagatogo in my village in Pago Pago; they had a Hollywood and Beverly Hills. They are houses full of fa`afafines. I was so fascinated by people who were like me. So although my house was the cleanest house, I would look for the trash just to walk past their house to look at them. Because I would be walking in the middle of the road between Hollywood and Beverly Hills and I would hear drums! Laughing! Hearing tones of voices screaming! And I would hear a lot of guys in there, it was where guys would love to go, it was beautiful.

Hollywood actually came from `Upolu, you know; Apia’s safe haven was Hollywood, where they migrated, because Apia was one of the places that had a law where men weren’t allowed to wear women’s clothes. So they migrated here. So they brought Hollywood here. Natives of this island created Beverly Hills. And these places were literally known for where actors and actresses lived and that’s their life and that’s how it was created, because these fa`afafine wanted to be glamorous actors and actresses and they really lived up to the glamor.

Men of status would go and meet them there and the governors would talk about it. All the fa`afafines in the back villages would try and move there because they heard of the place. Today those houses are still there but no longer called Hollywood and Beverly Hills. But at Hollywood, which was a Samoan fale, there was one fa`afafine living there because it was her family house, and the family let other fa`afafine live there because their sewing production was bringing in money, so they kept them there.

Those days it used to be filled with Samoan men because it was Fagatogo where all the bars were. So then, when the men were drunk they would go there to have sex. The fa`afafines had standards of selecting their men. It would be over money kinda thing, that’s why men of status would go there – it was not prostitution, it was never seen as prostitution but as a life of a married couple where men would bring money and food to the house. They would immediately play a role of a woman and a husband for a very short time before he goes back to his real wife and kids and there ends the episode of the day, and the next day comes with a new episode and a new man. It’s playing actress; would act normally, it’s very natural, natural:

‘Hun, au mai le mea`ai.’

‘Did you come with food? What did you bring?’

‘I brought some chicken.’

‘`Ia, leave it over there I’m gonna come and cook it.

‘What did you wanna eat?’

So fa`afafine would cook food, have sex and he leaves.

Those at Hollywood and Beverly Hills had jobs – like Dr. Vena

Sele and Leroy Lotu, those were the ones had teaching jobs. They were professional women and had relationship with men of status. I always wanted to live there in that arrangement, that arrangement suited me, that’s why I would take out the trash just to see it. And when they, Hollywood and Beverly Hills, would see me, and say, ‘Lea `ua sau! Lea `ua sau!’ and call out the drum roll and I would drop the trash and do the tamure! And they invited me into the house and it was really magical life and magical world.

‘Mala’ is another term for fa`afafine. It was actually coined by the heterosexual community and it means ‘cursed’ – ‘You’re a cursed mala.’ And when the fa`afafines were called a mala the fa`afafines liked it, they never saw it as a curse but as another name for fa`afafine. It hit me that, when I heard it from fa`afafine in Apia, how many times did we not use that word mala: it was [a] statement that made me think that the word was sour to me and the word fa`afafine was also sour to me. My dad my family my church people were like, ‘Eh! Fa`afafine!’ It was very degrading ... but ‘mala’ was more of a joking word. ‘Fa`afafine’ literally meaning ‘the way of the woman’ and ‘mala’ literally meaning ‘cursed’, so we were more slanted towards adopting ‘mala’ than ‘fa`afafine’. Now, with the association [SFA] being established, the fa`afafine word has come easy to the mind.

I wrote a paper on Fa`afafine and Polari, to compare fa`afafine slang with Polari, that English gay language. I called it in my paper fa`afafine slang. I was amazed at how similar the languages are, and both languages happened at all different parts of the world. I was amazed that we also have a back slang. For example, like with the word ‘alu’ in Samoan for fa`afafine would be ‘lu`a’; the ‘lu’ would be swapped with the ‘a’ – and the purpose of this fa`afafine slang was mainly to be different and to disguise what you’re saying to bystanders, to people that are listening in.

I understand that because fa`afafine have encounters with men of status, and when they talk about it they have to talk about it in a private way. So in order for them not to have the people putting their noses in their business, this slang came in handy to talk about their nights with men of status. So they would talk about it and laugh and talk about what went on and be fa`afafine through their conversation, through using the fa`afafine slangs, because they are the only one that knows it.

This slang, now all students in this generation are speaking it. The whole purpose of the paper was more like awareness to the Samoan public to know that fa`afafine slang is not a language that will replace the informal Samoan language, because it’s already keeping in like a vine. Well, [now] the kids are speaking the language and they are speaking like it’s theirs. They don’t even know the purpose of the fa`afafine language but when they say it, it’s like they belong to a certain society, and a society where, when you’re there, you’re cool. Because when you speak the fa`afafine language you belong to a certain society.

They would use ‘Samunda’ for ‘Samoan’; that will be using similar words to Samoan words. One of the ways they coin words is using the English language because, in Samoan words, you don’t end Samoan words with consonants, you always have to end with a vowel; so you would use different suffixes to end words like ‘malo’, and fa`afafines would turn it into ‘malocious’ and speak it with that hybrid language, the fa`afafine language that would come and go, and change.

I think I want to say that fa`afafine are fascinating creatures and their lives are lived on the surface and they belong to be lived on the surface of life. When you go to try and understand fa`afafine in the deeper sense their life is void, because it’s [by] going deep that you miss the whole life of the fa`afafine – because you don’t need to go very, very, deep to understand a fa`afa ne. And many time people try to find out, what is a fa`afafine? How come you’re that way? All these difficult questions and all these research are starting to come out about fa`afafine, which is good ... But I believe that you don’t have to look too far to understand who we are because it’s right there, you just have to have the right eye.