The Satoan Disease: Immunity and Indigeneity in Albert Wendt's The Mango's Kiss.

Authors

Matthew Hayward

Published in

Perspectives in biology and medicine. Volume 69. Issue 2. Pages 244-259.

Abstract

This article employs concepts of immunity to interpret the Samoan author Albert Wendt's novel The Mango's Kiss (2003). Contrasting Wendt's representation of two diseases-the 1918 influenza and a fictional illness called the Satoan Disease-it finds within the novel two accounts of immune response: a defensive system predicated on exclusion and the preservation of a bounded social body, and a relational system grounded in Indigenous ideas of adaptation and coexistence. Positioning these accounts in the context of competing paradigms in contemporary immunology, the article opens up a new reading of Wendt's critically underexamined novel. It concludes that The Mango's Kiss challenges the epistemological foundations of received biomedical and colonial discourse alike, proposing an alternative model of cultural resilience rooted in principles of indigenization and relational identity.

PMID:
42572878
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Aug 2026.

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