In a Slant Light: A Poet’s Memoir Cilla McQueen Otago University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781877578717 When I read Elizabeth Knox’s personal essays The Love School, in 2008, I finally realised that a writer’s past is whatever they say it is.…
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Poetic truths, Helen Heath
Tagged with: Autumn 2017, Cilla McQueen, Helen Heath, Issue 117, Otago University Press
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Gold-panning history, Paul Moon
Rushing for Gold: Life and Commerce on the Goldfields of New Zealand and Australia Lloyd Carpenter and Lyndon Fraser (eds) Otago University Press, $45.00 ISBN 9781877578540 Since 1887, when Vincent Pyke’s History of the Early Gold Discoveries in Otago was…
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Tagged with: Issue 116, Lloyd Carpenter, Lyndon Fraser, Otago University Press, Paul Moon, Summer 2016
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Tipping points, S. T.
First Lady – From Boyhood to Womanhood: The Incredible Story of New Zealand’s Sex-change Pioneer
Liz Roberts with Alison Mau
Upstart Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781927262375
Sexual Cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand Education
Alexandra C Gunn and Lee A Smith (eds)
Otago University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781877578687
2014 was the transgender tipping point. At least that’s what Time Magazine declared, with its front cover featuring the transgender actress Laverne Cox poised mid-step, svelte and powerful, beside the subheading “Men cannot become women. Women cannot become men”. This heading – possibly perplexing to those unfamiliar with transgender issues – is part of the media’s growing sensitivity towards trans identities: if someone born male wants to be a woman, then they always were a woman; it is society that categorised them as a man.
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Tagged with: Alexandra C Gunn, Alison Mau, Issue 114, Lee A Smith, Liz Roberts, Otago University Press, S.T., Upstart Press, Winter 2016
Posted in Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
Posted in Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
Tales from the colonial crypt, Jock Phillips
Unearthly Landscapes: New Zealand’s Early Cemeteries, Churchyards and Urupa¯
Stephen Deed
Otago University Press, $50.00,
ISBN 9781927322185
A confession: I am a cemetery buff. On arriving at any New Zealand settlement, it is not long before I find the local burial ground and spend an hour or so walking slowly along the lines of headstones perusing and reading every one. This is not some ghoulish addiction. It is because there is no quicker or more intense way to encounter our history. You learn intriguing personal stories, you confront tragic drownings or the loss of infants in epidemics. Unusual family relationships are suggested which leave you yearning to know more; and you wonder at the moral values inscribed in stone in tributes to leading citizens. The design of headstones offers insights into architectural history and bears a fascinating relationship to domestic styles. Cemeteries are beautiful, peculiarly peaceful places.
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Tagged with: Issue 114, Jock Phillips, Otago University Press, Stephen Deed, Winter 2016
Posted in History, Non-fiction
Posted in History, Non-fiction
“A most entertaining little man”, Chris Szekely
Hocken: Prince of Collectors Donald Jackson Kerr Otago University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781877578 663 Dry bread and milk for breakfast. Dry bread and milk for supper. Not much chop for a boy of eight at Woodhouse Grove in 1844, but that…
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Tagged with: Autumn 2016, Chris Szekely, Donald Jackson Kerr, Issue 113, Otago University Press, Thomas Morland Hocken
Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review
The thing-ness of history, Cherie Lacey
The Lives of Colonial Objects Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla (eds) Otago University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9781927322024 The Lives of Colonial Objects seeks to tell the history, or rather a number of histories, of New Zealand’s colonial past…
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Tagged with: Angela Wanhalla, Annabel Cooper, Autumn 2016, Cherie Lacey, Issue 113, Lachy Paterson, Otago University Press
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Poetical philosophies, John Dennison
Song of the Ghost in the Machine Roger Horrocks Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780864739858 Shaggy Magpie Songs Murray Edmond Auckland University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781869408411 Generation Kitchen Richard Reeve Otago University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781877578922 Roger Horrocks’s Song of…
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Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2016, Issue 113, John Dennison, Murray Edmond, Otago University Press, Richard Reeve, Roger Horrocks, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
A shadowy part of the country’s history, Paul Moon
From Alba to Aotearoa: Profiling New Zealand’s Scots Migrants 1840-1920 Rebecca Lenihan Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781877578793 Migration, Ethnicity, and Madness: New Zealand, 1860-1910 Angela McCarthy Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781927322000 The 12th century; 1642; 1769. These are…
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Tagged with: Angela McCarthy, Autumn 2016, Issue 113, Otago University Press, Paul Moon, Rebecca Lenihan
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review