Emma and Phebe: "Weavers of the Border"

Authors

  • Damon Salesa The University of Auckland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15286/jps.123.2.145-167

Keywords:

Biography, Samoa, women, New Guinea, 'mixed race'

Abstract

Emma Coe (1850-1913) and Phebe Coe (1863-1944) were sisters born in Samoa to an American father and a Samoan mother. Raised in Samoa, the sisters went on to live much of their lives in Melanesia, mostly in northern New Guinea. The sisters became prominent in business, planting, colonial society, ethnographic work and public culture. This essay is a biography of the sisters, whose histories were extraordinary, as they made public and commercial lives at a time when few women did or indeed could, and where a mixed-race identity was often made into a burden.

Author Biography

Damon Salesa, The University of Auckland

Toesulusulu Damon Salesa is Associate Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland. A graduate in History from the University of Auckland and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he worked from 2002-11 at the University of Michigan. His recent book, Racial Crossings (Oxford University Press, 2011), won the Ernest Scott Prize in 2012. He is currently working on his Marsden (Royal Society of NZ) funded project, a history of “everyday Samoa†1800-2000.
Vol 123, No 2 (2014)

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Published

2014-10-06

Issue

Vol. 123 No. 2 (2014)

Section

Articles

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