Blog Archives

Hurting in different ways, Veronica Maughan

Life On Volcanoes: Contemporary Essays
Janet McAllister (ed)
Beatnik Publishing, $25.00,
ISBN 9780994138392

Life On Volcanoes: Contemporary Essays first and foremost intimidated me. I am 19, a second-year university student. I work part-time in a café, as a waitress. I do stupid and dangerous things whenever I want to, because I can. I am cloaked in my youth: look, how beautifully the nascent cloth shimmers! The freedom, the naivety: it glitters like gold. And it marks me, as well. A dunce cap. It is far too easy to pick out in a crowd. I have not learned to put on the black coats favoured by the real writers. They are simply too big.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review

The Hutt Valley takes Manhattan … Murray Bramwell

Book Of Cohen 
David Cohen
Steele Roberts, $30.00,
ISBN 9780947493882

Book Of Cohen is a singular volume with multiple objectives: “This was always going to be a work by one Cohen (that would be me) on another Cohen (that would be Leonard)”. “I’ve always been Cohen-mad,” the author confides, “but there was another Cohen lurking in the picture as well.”

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Making conversation, Michele A’Court

Past Caring? Women, Work And Emotion
Barbara Brookes, Jane McCabe and Angela Wanhalla
Otago University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9781988531342

Still Counting: Wellbeing, Women’s Work And Policy-making
Marilyn Waring
BWB Texts, $15.00,
ISBN 9781988545530

A few days ago at a book launch (I had written the foreword) a young man who also works in the comedy industry asked what I had been up to so far this year. Not wanting to ruin his party buzz with the real answer, I shrugged a bit and said, “Oh, you know, just the usual bits and pieces.” He smiled sympathetically, muttered something about how nice it must be to take a break – code in our business for, “Shit, sorry you can’t find work” – and wandered off to find someone more full of news to talk to. I slipped off to the bathroom to have a cry before presenting myself once again at the open bar.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Speaking frankly, Margaret Sparrow

My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers In An Era Of Change
Caren Wilton (Madeleine Slavick photographer)
Otago University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781988531328

As I write this review, I hear a news item that Dame Catherine Healy DNZM and Julie Bates AO, a leading Australian sex worker, are presenting a submission on the decriminalisation of prostitution to Members of the South Australian parliament. It demonstrates how far New Zealand has progressed on this issue. Sixteen years ago, in 2003, when the law changed, this scenario would never have been envisaged. In June 2018, both women received Queen’s Birthday Awards from their respective governments. In Healy’s case, she was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Bates became an Officer of the Order of Australia. Both awards were richly deserved for many years dedicated to improving the health and safety of sex workers.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Galling truth, Megan Dunn

Kaitiaki o te Pō: Essays 
John-Paul Powley 
Seraph Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780994134592

I am in two minds about John-Paul Powley’s Kaitiaki o te Pō – this is a good essay collection, even really good. But goodness is also Powley’s Achilles heel. The collection, his first, contains 17 personal essays – some convey his perspective as both a high school teacher and a dean. The best of these, like “Pastoral Scene”, are a wrench. The sentences hit deep and low, and the truth rings out. But the catch? A touch of didacticism.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review

Women past and present, Kim Worthington

Women Equality Power: Helen Clark: Selected Speeches from a Life of Leadership
Allen and Unwin, $45.00,
ISBN 9781988547053

Women Now: The Legacy of Female Suffrage
Bronwyn Labrum (ed)
Te Papa Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780994146007

If there was ever a year in which to publish a collection of Helen Clark’s speeches, 2018 was it. This was, after all, the year in which New Zealand celebrated the 125th anniversary of the granting of female suffrage, the first nation in the world to do so. This not only gave women the right to vote, but ultimately led to women being able to enter parliament (although this took a further 30-odd years) – and finally become leaders of the nation. It was also the year in which one of Clark’s Labour Party mentees, Jacinda Ardern, became our third female New Zealand prime minister, gave birth while in office and, after a very short period of maternity leave, resumed her professional role. This is not irrelevant to both books under review – Ardern writes the foreword to Clark’s collected speeches, is mentioned more than once in Clark’s later speeches, and in Women Now. 2018 was also the year in which the #MeToo movement gained its most traction worldwide, something that is referred to several times in both books under review.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

The unnerving detritus of what was, Jane Westaway

The Shops
Steve Braunias and Peter Black (photographer)
Luncheon Sausage Books, $40.00,
ISBN 9780908689941

Once upon a time, I met people who owned a shop. I was young and impressionable and, on my first visit, was dazzled by a window display of ladies’ and gents’ watches, silverware and jewellery. The door pinged when you pushed it. Once inside, glass shelves and counters gleamed with promise, and the watchmaker’s wife stood behind the counter. It was a small place in a small town, but I was thrilled, not so much by what these people were offering for sale, as by the concept of shop-keeping itself.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review

Downtown voices and sugar-rush diction, David Cohen

The Journal of Urgent Writing 2016 Nicola Legat (ed) Massey University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780994130068 Tell You What 2017: Great New Zealand Nonfiction  Susanna Andrew and Jolisa Gracewood (eds) Auckland University Press, $30.00, ISBN 9781869408602 If I had to name

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review

Rethinking the past, Melissa Laing

Re-inventing New Zealand: Essays on the Arts and the Media  Roger Horrocks Atuanui Press, $45.00, ISBN 9780992245382 As I opened a blank document to begin this review, a tweet popped up in my feed from Morgan Godfery: “Sure,” Godfery writes

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Art, Essays, Media, Non-fiction, Review

Shining a transformative light, Sarah Quigley

Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand Ingrid Horrocks and Cherie Lacey (eds) Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781776560707 At a time when much of Europe is preoccupied with redefining – and defending – boundaries, New Zealand is

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review
Search the archive
Search by category