Writing Prompt: Island Magic
Islanders from the Papua New Guinea region, with lives full of magic and cricket.
Our first prompt for June part of our Armchair Traveller theme:
Pacific Islands of Paradise
The Trobriand people are a horticulturalist people who live in traditional settlements in the Trobriand Islands.
Their social structure is based on matrilineal clans that control land and resources. People participate in the regional circuit of exchange of shells called kula, sailing to visit trade partners on seagoing canoes.
Author’s Aside:
I either read (or had a fever dream) about master sailors and their exploits.
Braving the wild tropical oceans on humble crafts purely to exchange ancient necklaces and win prestige and status. The oldest and most famous of these necklaces had their own names.
If anyone else has read this story please remind me in the comments.
In the late twentieth century, anti-colonial and cultural autonomy movements gained followers from the Trobriand societies.
The Trobriand people speak Kilivila, through various different dialects of it are spoken amongst each different tribe.
It is an Austronesian language, although has the distinction of having a complex system for classifying nouns.
Foreign languages are less commonly spoken, although by the 1980s at least, Trobrianders occasionally spoke Tok Pisin and English.
Trobriand cricket
Trobriand cricket is a unique form of the sport that is a replacement for war in the Trobriand culture and is often played between all male teams.
This type of cricket is characterized by elements which reflect the culture of the islanders, such as the use of spells and charms, and the lack of limit on team size. The game is full of sexual metaphors and often involves magic.
The sport is also associated with war, and there are often reports of violence and vandalism when matches end unfavourably for the home team.
Magic!
Trobrianders believe that conception is the result of an ancestral spirit entering the woman’s body, and that it is the mother’s brother, not the father, who presents a harvest of yams to his sister so that her child will be fed with food from its own matrilineage.
The Trobrianders practice many traditional magic spells, which are often partially or fully lost because the old people give away only a few lines at a time to keep getting gifts.
A man may give a woman magic spells because he wants to give her more than betel nuts or tobacco, and people may buy and sell spells.
Fascinating!
For the more curious:
Write a story inspired by or including these people
Develop characters in the round, or perhaps use a Gulliver’s Travel or a Stranger from a Strange Land mechanic, to avoid caricatures or stereotypes.
The idea is to grow from learning about new people from different places.
Your story must:
- Be min 100 and max 1000 words long, excluding the title, subtitle, and any post-story bio/links. (We use Medium’s own word count feature.)
- We recommend tagging your story Fiction, Flash Fiction and maybe your genre too. Or 100 Word Challenge if you’re doing that. But it’s your choice.
- Please link back to the prompt so others can find it easily.
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