Blog Archives

Literary contradictions, Alistair Fox

Striding Both Worlds: Witi Ihimaera and New Zealand’s Literary Traditions
Melissa Kennedy
Rodopi
ISBN 9789042033573

Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial
Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber and Delia da Sousa Correa (eds)
Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 9780748669097

In Striding Both Worlds, Melissa Kennedy has written one of the most substantial and insightful books published in the field of New Zealand literature in recent years. Apart from the light it sheds on the works of Witi Ihimaera, its importance resides in the challenge it mounts to the conventional, accepted reading of Māori literature in New Zealand. Whereas most critics during the past 30 years have approached this literature from a “culture-centred position” derived from postcolonial theory, Kennedy reads from a “text-centred position”, and places Ihimaera’s work in the broader context of Western cultural references, rather than construing it simply in terms of the politics of Māori nationalism, as almost all previous commentators have done. Her study also benefits from being informed by a wider range of critical and theoretical perspectives, including those of European scholars, than is usually the case.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Review

They fuck you up, Andrew Fieldsend

The Ship of Dreams: Masculinity in Contemporary Pakeha and Maori Fiction of Aotearoa/New Zealand Alistair Fox Otago University Press, $45.00,  ISBN 9781877372544 In this academic but engaging study of masculinity in contemporary New Zealand fiction, Alistair Fox of the University

See more ›

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

Postcolonial flowering, Alistair Fox

The Essential Old Rose: Growing and Using Old Roses in New Zealand  Trevor Griffiths Viking, $34.95, ISBN 0 670 87187 7 The New Zealand Book of Roses: The best 150 Varieties,  2ed John Martin and Colin Hutchinson Viking, $34.95, ISBN

See more ›

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