Alofa Filiga is thirteen years old. She lives with her family, the Filiga 'aiga, in the village of Malaefou, not far from Apia in Western Samoa. But Alofa isn't happy; coming of age in Samoa isn't as easy as those European anthropologists imagined it to be. Sia Figiel's first book uses the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su'ifefiloi to tell a modern tragicomedy of violence, the repression of women and the struggle for identity in today's Samoa. It is a forceful and honest adult work; the first of its kind to come from the Pacific.