Loving Solidarities and the Mā'ohi Family: Queer and Trans Care in the Novels of Titaua Peu

Abstract

What are the elements that make up “good” care? A care network only becomes enduring when it pays due attention to the realities of burnout and the gendered, racial and classist dynamics that create an unequal distribution of care. Care networks among queer and trans folks often function without or beyond the foundation of the nuclear family. However, in her familial novels, Mutismes (2002) and Pina (2016), Mā'ohi author Titaua Peu offers intimate webs in which catalysts for a shared care ethos are based on practices cultivated by queer and trans characters. Focusing on these caring epistemologies, this article argues that Peu demonstrates the potential of such knowledges that appear in the margins between dominant perceptions of care work and those conceived of long ago by queer and trans communities in that they are didactic––emphasizing loving solidarities that sustain the contemporary Mā'ohi family.