Book Review | BWB Texts

Old Asian, New Asian, by K. Emma Ng (BWB Texts, paper $14.99; e-book $4.99)

Reviewed by Judith Morrell Nathan

This book, written by a young second-generation Chinese New Zealander, gives many examples of the racism that Asian New Zealanders experience. Ng defines racism as both prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (acts). She points out she uses the terms “Asian” and “Chinese” more or less interchangeably but in fact most of her material is about Chinese. The statement on the cover conveys her hope that: “Perhaps at some point we will no longer be asked to justify our presence or prove our worth.”

Ng gives a brief historical overview, noting that the Chinese were invited here as long ago as the 1860s to the Otago Goldfields. Once they were here, anti-Chinese sentiment quickly developed and spread. She points out that Paul Spoonley and Richard Bedford commented on the similarities with regard to Pasifika — invited to fill labour shortages but subsequently discriminated against. For Chinese, there were some 55 acts and amendments that singled them out, for example levying a poll tax on entry (for many years 100 pounds) and preventing them from becoming citizens or receiving welfare benefits. Police could search Chinese dwellings without warrants. Chinese women were not allowed to immigrate here until the rules were loosened after the Japanese invaded Manchuria in the 1930s. As recently as 1961, even New Zealand-born Chinese had to get a permit to re-enter the country if they left it. She also considers the barriers to acceptance — most obviously appearance — but the 1960s to 1980s saw a decline in discrimination and apparent acceptance at last. Chinese New Zealanders were largely invisible and strove not to draw attention to themselves.

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Excerpt / Release

200 Women

Ruth Hobday, Geoff Blackwell, and Kieran Scott (distributed by Upstart Press, $75 RRP | Website: http://www.twohundredwomen.com/)

*****

Marama Fox was born in Hamilton, New Zealand. She has taught at Māori-language immersion schools aimed at fostering an understanding of Māori language, culture and wisdom, and in public secondary schools. Fox was an advisor to the Ministry of Education before being elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2014; she is a representative* and co-leader of the Māori Party.

Q: What really matters to you?

Our Māori children – I went into politics to help our nation remember how to love our children. It is time to correct the disparity that exists between Māori and Pākehā – between indigenous New Zealanders and those descended from European settlers. People have to listen to the realities of what it means to be Māori, so that we can develop and implement better policies that help our children realise their aspirations. I want our children to know how great they are – to stand up and embrace the greatness of their ancestors and their achievements. So, I am paving the way for my children’s generation to take back their narrative.

For a long time, I myself held negative perceptions of my people and thought I had a great Western education; I learned about Elizabeth I and about the wonderful settlers who colonised New Zealand. I had intended to go to university, but I had a baby instead. It was when I took my son to kōhanga reo that I was exposed to a Māori world view. Kōhanga reo is a Māori language nest – a pre-school – hosted by our elders in an effort to revive our language. They invite mothers to bring their children along to be spoken to in te reo Māori and to be schooled in the knowledge of our people. It felt like someone had taken off the top of my head with a can opener and had started pouring in all this knowledge. Oh, my gosh, my brain!

Images copyright © 2017 Kieran E. Scott kieranscottphotography.com

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Book Review

Out of the Ocean, Into the Fire: History in the rocks, fossils and landforms of Auckland, Northland and Coromandel.

by Bruce W. Hayward (Geoscience Society of New Zealand, 336 pages, distributed by Potton & Burton, $50)

Reviewed by Simon Nathan

2017 is the fiftieth anniversary of the development of the concept of plate tectonics – now widely accepted as an explanation of how the earth works, including the relationship between mountains, earthquakes and volcanoes. New Zealand is situated on a major plate boundary, and our understanding of local geology has been completely rethought in recent years.

This magnificently illustrated book is a synthesis of current knowledge of the geology and landscapes of northern New Zealand, a complex region that was difficult to understand before the era of plate tectonics. Although written for the non-specialist reader, the book is the product of decades of research, mainly by former students and staff of the University of Auckland, in which Bruce Hayward has played a prominent part.

After an introductory chapter, the text is organised into 11 chapters, starting with the oldest greywacke basement rocks, and progressively working upwards to the development of the present landscape over the last one million years. The text is interspersed with text boxes, which deal mainly with specific geological features, especially fossils, rocks and mining. The ‘Fire’ aspect of the title is covered in three chapters (6, 7 & 9) dealing with volcanism that has been semi-continuous over the last 24 million years, leaving many distinctive landforms. It is claimed that the volcanic activity is of greater diversity than in any other area of similar size elsewhere in the world – volcanic arcs of andesite volcanoes, giant caldera volcanoes, searing ignimbrite flows and rhyolite domes followed by over 200 small basalt volcanoes.

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Book Review

I am, I am, I am: Seventeen brushes with death,

by Maggie O’Farrell (Penguin, $40, Hachette)

Reviewed by Wendy Montrose

I am, I am, I am is a memoir with a difference. Subtitled Seventeen Brushes With Death, it tells the story of Maggie O’Farrell’s life in a series of near-death encounters at different ages: ‘Snatches of a life, a string of moments.’  From a childhood illness O’Farrell wasn’t expected to survive to a life-saving dash with her own dangerously ill child, I am, I am, I am is a collage of some of the experiences that made her who she is.

O’Farrell writes each event as though she is living it now and imbues them with all the feeling she must have relived with every word. How she articulates her pain after a miscarriage, her terror in the face of danger, her teenage dissatisfaction, her maternal distress is so real, so sincere that you feel each event, and recognise them.

‘In moments like these, your thinking shrinks, sharpens, narrows. The world shutters up and you are reduced to a crystalline pinpoint, to a single purpose:’

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Book Review

Solitude: In pursuit of a singular life in a crowded world, by Michael Harris (Penguin, $40, paper)

Reviewed by Alex Beattie

In one of the most revealing studies of the last decade, a team of University of Virginia psychologists set out to see how good undergraduates were at entertaining themselves.  They left students alone in a room and asked them to ponder whatever was on their mind for fifteen minutes. But – and here’s the crux – if students felt starved of stimulation, they could shock themselves. And zap themselves they did, with over half of the students choosing electricity over solitude.

Reading this for the first time, I couldn’t help but smirk a little smugly at these easily bored Millennials. I would never succumb to such desperation! But once my silent gloating settled, I realised I had been on my smartphone for the last hour or so. And apart from the occasional run, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been separated from my digital companion. Was I just as bad as these students? Had I become afraid of being alone with my thoughts?

We all have, according to author Michael Harris, whose book Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World seeks to find out why. And it’s something every introvert should be interested in.

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Book Review

The Lost Taonga, by Edmund Bohan (Lucano, $35)

Reviewed by Alison McCulloch

There’s actually not a whole lot of Inspector Patrick O’Rorke in Edmund Bohan’s sixth and latest Inspector O’Rorke novel The Lost Taonga. There’s not a lot of New Zealand in it either, despite its very New Zealand subject matter. Set in the late 1800s, the books tackles a painful issue that’s still very much with us — the theft and expatriation of Māori artefacts and treasures — the taonga of Bohan’s title.

In an historical note, Bohan offers the real-life example of the theft in the early 1880s of mummified tūpāpaku (dead bodies) from Tainui’s burial caves by the Austrian collector Andreas Reischek, who sold them to Vienna’s Imperial Natural History Museum. (Bohan writes that the bodies are still in the museum, though according to media reports, they’ve been progressively repatratiated.) It was this story that gave him the idea for a previous novel A Present for the Czar. “Now,” Bohan writes, “The Lost Taonga describes the background of that theft and follows the subsequent journeyings of both taonga and the characters drawn into its orbit.”

It’s a great idea for an historical crime novel and Bohan’s fictional version is well-written and plotted. Real-life historical figure Julius von Haast features as an unwitting dupe of the crafty and beautiful Polish Countess Margarita Szechnyi and her partner in crime, “Boyland the Collector”. Haast helps guide the thieves to the scene of the crime — “secret burial caves containing rare treasures, situated in the valley of the Wairau River in a region called Murihiku” — but insists nothing be removed from the caves. Margarita and Boyland have other plans, however, and sneak back later for a raid.

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Book Review

Hot Flush, by Rosy Fenwicke (Wheelers, paper; e-book via Amazon)

Reviewed by Wendy Montrose

In Hot Flush, ordinary Euphemia Sage, 53-year-old wife, mother and business consultant acquires special physical powers, super powers if you like, as she goes through menopause. “I can see better, hear better and smell better than any human – better than any dog, which is saying something…”

It should be ridiculous but it’s such fun and it’s written well enough to keep the pages turning. In fact Hot Flush was hard to put down, and the suspense and unexpected twists make up for any failings.

We follow Euphemia’s adventures as she comes to grips with ‘Rachel’s Switch’, a genetic phenomenon triggered by the menopause and passed down from eldest daughter to eldest daughter through the generations in her family. Euphemia had heard the stories but, like any right minded 21st-century woman, was sceptical until that first hot flush triggered not only the ‘Switch’ but also a series of increasingly bizarre events.

Overnight, she is thrust into the world of loan sharks, thick-necked heavies in cheap suits and gratuitous violence. Faced with uninvited callers, kidnap at gun point and a knife-wielding plumber bent on murder, Euphemia is forced to put her powers to the test.

Hot Flush is good light entertainment, and Rosy Fenwicke writes with skill. Euphemia is an entirely believable and likeable character, flawed as we all are but essentially a good, honest, down to earth super woman (“two words, lower case”). The villains are perhaps a little too slap-stick — more comic, evil mastermind than genuinely bad — but Jane, the ‘friend’ from school who’s financial woes get Euphemia in trouble is brilliant, and I loved Petal, the pug and I’m not even a dog person. There is enough back story to give the characters substance and Fenwicke even proffers a plausible enough explanation for Rachel’s Switch to give it some credibility. Perhaps that’s her medical background coming through.

Rosie Fenwicke is a doctor, writer and mother of three adult children. This is her first novel, she suggests the first of a series, and is a fine effort, if perhaps a little unpolished in places — not quite the right word here, or a little too much tell instead of show there. For all that, the narrative moves along, its good pace and humour making Hot Flush a most enjoyable read.  I look forward to the next one.

Releases

Nina’s Phantom Friend

Written and Illustrated, by Andy Conlan

Andy Conlan, award-winning feature film director, editorial cartoonist and author, is pleased to announce the release of his latest work, an illustrated book for young readers, Nina’s Phantom Friend.

Published by Duck Creek Press, David Ling’s imprint for children, the book follows the eponymous character as she embarks upon an adventure to the underworld to retrieve the body of her cat, who disappeared a year ago. This is not a solo trip though, her travelling companion is the ghost of that very cat, who guides her towards his remains. On the way, she passes through a landscape reminiscent of the Paris Catacombs, drifts down a Styx like River with a Charon like Ferry man, and encounters a creature who has morbidly hoarded the bones of thousands of cats. Without the correct answer to the requisite Greek Mythology-style riddle, Nina’s attempt to retrieve her friend’s earthly remains will be lost in administrative red tape.

The whole thing is lushly illustrated in a mid 20th-century style, with European looking linework, Edward Gorey-esque characterisations, and a colour palette that can only be described as “Dark Dr. Seuss.” The book is a modern day production in a vintage styled package, and is a significant departure from anything commonly seen in children’s literature today.

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Book Review | BWB Texts

Fair Borders? Migration Policy in the Twenty-First Century,

edited by David Hall (BWB Texts, paper $14.99; e-book $4.99)

Reviewed by Judith Morrell Nathan

This is a thought-provoking, timely collection of essays by a diverse range of New Zealanders, most of whom are academics here or abroad.  Their varied perspectives, political, economic, social and cultural are all loosely connected to the theme of fairness.

In his introductory essay, David Hall from AUT analyses the concept of fairness and questions how genuine the supposed impacts of immigration on housing, employment, infrastructure and social welfare are.

Tahu Kukutai and Arama Rata, both from the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis at the University of Waikato, consider issues from a Maori perspective which they point out has been ignored in the immigration debate.  They consider the relationship between today’s immigration and the mass immigrations of  nineteenth-century colonisation which swamped the tangata whenua.  New citizens are required to pledge allegiance to the Queen but what about to the Treaty of Waitangi? Kate Macmillan, from Victoria University Politics department, acknowledges there are inherent contradictions between what is fair to the would-be arrivals and to those already here. New Zealand has one of the world’s most liberal regimes with regard to voting rights, introduced in 1975 when most immigrants were from Britain.  In 2015-16 the largest number of migrants came from India and China, (then UK and the Philippines).  Immigrants with the right of residence can vote here after one year – which exemplifies the principle of no taxation without representation, but is it fair to our citizens to give such recent arrivals a say in how our country is run?

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Interviews

Hard to Find Books: Fundraiser

An email asking for help showed up in our in-box this week from Hard to Find Books, so we reached out to the owner, Warwick Jordan, to ask him what’s up.

Q. Can you give us some background about Hard to Find Books, like when you started up, why and what you do?
A. The bookshop began as a hobby in a garage back in 1983, a real bookstore in 1984, and found its present home in Onehunga, Auckland, in 1988. It was founded on my passion and obsession for books of all kinds, and I believe we have created a store with an essence of magic, pleasure and surprise, a repository of learning, knowledge and entertainment. The books in the shop are complemented by the store itself — a several storey 19th-century chaotic shambles of a timber building with well-worn wooden stairs and original wallpaper still hanging (just) from the walls. It is both a cultural icon and an economic anachronism with a unique bookish atmosphere available to all incomes and tastes.

Q. You’ve recently started a fundraising campaign. What’s the reason for that? Read more »