Blog Archives
A Woman’s Place Redmer Yska Penguin Books, $20.00, ISBN 97840143568087 A Woman’s Place is a small book in every sense. Penguin’s web page classes it as both “humour” and “gift book”. Though it does have pages and a cover, it…
Abortion Then and Now: New Zealand Abortion Stories from 1940 to 1980 Margaret Sparrow Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780864736321 It was estimated in the early 20th century that a quarter of all maternal deaths in New Zealand were…
Leading the Way: How New Zealand Women Won the Vote Megan Hutching HarperCollins, $39.99, ISBN 9781869507923 “Tis the glory of New Zealand that her sons were first to see/That there never was a free land where the women were not…
Rethinking Women and Politics: New Zealand and Comparative Perspectives Kate McMillan, John Leslie and Elizabeth McLeay (eds) Victoria University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9780864736109 Rethinking Women and Politics is based on a series of papers prepared for a Wellington workshop in…
Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs Pip Desmond Random House, $39.99, ISBN 9781869792435 This is a brave book in a number of ways. The women who have contributed are brave. Their stories are not pretty; their present lives…
Serial Survivors: Women’s Narratives of Surviving Rape Jan Jordan The Federation Press, $49.99, ISBN 9781862876798 It could easily be a Jimmy McGovern script. A “good husband and father of three children”, with a secret lover on the side, stalks and…
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…
Mates and Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand Chris Brickell Godwit, $49.99, ISBN 9781869621346 This review comes to you from the backwoods of Ontario. It is a crisp autumn evening. I write this in front of a fire in…
Women with a Mission: Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand Cathy Ross Penguin Books, $39.95, ISBN 0143020501 Be careful what you leave behind you. That unflattering photo could well be the one chosen for your obituary (should you be…
When She Became He: A Change for Good John Thorp Cape Catley, $27.99, ISBN 1877340073 When I worked as a publisher a well-worn line about New Zealand autobiographies was that only All Blacks and politicians could sell enough to make…