What happens when you miss a bus that results in your missing a plane, leaving you in New Zealand for an extra week? To answer that question you need to read Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All by Christina Thompson.To call Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All a memoir seems a bit simplistic, though Thompson's romance and life with Seven, her Maori husband, is the core of the narrative. I might call it a personal historical essay, for Thompson includes a history of Maori-European colonial relations in the context of the history of Pacific explorations further set within world history. She adds the story of her mother's family's settlement in the Minnesota territory where the Sioux and other American tribes were removed from their lands by the "lesser" genocide of cultural erasure. The result is a meditation on racial dominance made very personal by thoughts about the futures of her half-Maori sons. Though always short on cash, she and Seven are endowing them with a fortune in family history.
As a reader, I was charmed and enthralled. As a reference librarian, I appreciate the glossary and bibliography. Being both, I wish there was an index making it easier to find what she said about various ship captains and Pacific islands. As a reader again, I recommend it to my friends who enjoy a good story.
Thompson, Christina. Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All. Bloomsbury, 2008. ISBN 9781596911260
1 comment:
This sounds like a fascinating book! When we immigrated to New Zealand from the US in 2005, one of the reasons we chose NZ was that they treated their indigenous people (Maori) better than the US treated the American Indians. It will be interesting to read about this issue from the author's perspective.
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