Publishers Weekly
In this unusual hybrid of history and memoir, Harvard Review editor Thompson examines the historical collisions between Westerners and Maoris through the lens of her marriage to a Maori man. As an American grad student in Australia, Thompson met her husband-to-be, known as "Seven," while on vacation in New Zealand. She was petite, blonde and intellectual; he was large, dark and working-class. Yet within a short time, they had married and started a family. Their relationship, and her scholarship, took them back and forth across the Pacific, until they finally settled in her family's New England home outside Boston. Thompson's deep knowledge of the history of Europeans in the Pacific allows her to trace the misunderstandings and stereotypes that have marked perceptions of Polynesians up to the present day. A sensitive observer and polished stylist, Thompson is never dully tendentious or dogmatic. The narrative moves smoothly by way of well-told anecdotes both personal and historical. At times, Thompson covers so much territory-there's a stray chapter about her family's interactions with Native Americans in Minnesota-that it can feel like she's trying to do too much, yet her prose never disappoints. Seven, the man at the center of the book, remains pleasingly opaque, as if Thompson is saying that we can never know completely even those we love best. (July)
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Kirkus Reviews
Perceptive, endearing look at the often fraught contacts between Maoris and Westerners, both in history and in the personal life of Harvard Review editor Thompson. Two decades ago, while on vacation from her graduate studies in literature of the Pacific at the University of Melbourne, the Boston-raised author met a Maori man in Kerikeri, New Zealand. She and Seven (so-named because he is the seventh of ten children) fell in love, married, had three children and lived all over the Pacific before moving in with her parents near Boston. Thompson mingles this personal story with a candid examination of persistent, troubling issues of race and stereotype in the history of the two cultures' encounters. The first was in 1642, when Dutch captain Abel Janszoon Tasman named the New Zealand inlet where his ships lay anchored "Murderers' Bay" after a deadly collision with the local Maoris. Subsequent accounts, including those by Cook and Darwin, underscored the indigenous tribes' "bellicose" nature, yet the author points out that the Maoris' warlike image was most likely a byproduct of Western contact. Similarly, the initial bewilderment and misunderstanding between the two cultures experienced when she and Seven first met could easily have marred their relationship. Thompson gently portrays her husband's decidedly non-Western worldview: his resistance to planning for the future, his superstitiousness and his sense of communalism. It challenged her ingrained notions of class and race, and it also occasionally supported the Noble Savage stereotype. "What was funny about living with Seven," she writes, "was the way those musty paradigms . . . would periodically spring to life." She closes with aheartfelt letter to the couple's three sons, each containing "a little bit of the conqueror and conquered," asking them not to be sentimental about their dual ancestry since, in the end, their parents aren't as different as they look. Honest, forthright self-examination engenders a well-wrought sense of shared destiny. Agent: Brettne Bloom/Kneerim & Williams
From the Publisher
[A] fine account. Her observations about the enduring effects of colonization [are] penetrating. She puts her vantage point of insider-outsider to good effect, tracing the genealogy of racial stereotypes and cutting through some of New Zealand's most cherished myths about itself.” —New York Times Book Review
“Thompson is never dully tendentious or dogmatic. The narrative moves smoothly by way of well-told anecdotes both personal and historical. Her prose never disappoints. ” —Publishers Weekly
“Perceptive, endearing look at the often fraught contacts between Maoris and Westerners. A candid examination of persistent, troubling issues of race and stereotype in the history of the two cultures' encounters. Honest...forthright...well-wrought.” —Kirkus
“Christina Thompson defines a contact encounter as "what we call it when two previously unacquainted groups meet for the very first time." This unusual, unclassifiable, unfailingly interesting book is a contact encounter. Few readers will forget their first meeting with the author, with her Maori husband, and with the historical context that swirls around them. Thompson writes beautifully, and, even more remarkably, she surprises us on every page.” —Anne Fadiman, author of At Large and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
“A charming blend of travel writing, cultural history, anthropology, and memoir, this intriguing book honors the nineteenth-century explorers' narratives that are its inspiration.” —Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal
