Reading Pakeha

Aotearoa New Zealand, "a tiny Pacific country," is of great interest to those engaged in postcolonial and literary studies throughout the world. In all former colonies, myths of national identity are vested with various interests. Shifts in collective Pakeha (or New Zealand-European) identity have been marked by the phenomenal popularity of three novels, each at a time of massive social change. Late-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and the collapse of the idea of a singular 'nation' can be traced through the reception of John Mulgan's Man Alone (1939), Keri Hulme's the bone people (1983), and Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors (1990). Yet close analysis of these three novels also reveals marginalization and silencing in claims to singular Pakeha identity and a linear development of settler acculturation. Such a dynamic resonates with that of other 'settler' cultures - the similarities and differences telling in comparison. Specifically, Reading Pakeha? Fiction and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand explores how concepts of race and ethnicity intersect with those of gender, sex, and sexuality. This book also asks whether 'Pakeha' is still a meaningful term.

'This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pākehā. Every Pākehā becomes a Pākehā in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Māori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pākehā – and other New Zealanders – curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pākehā often experience in our relationships with Māori.' A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pākehā and Māori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.

Pākehā Settlements in a Māori World offers a vivid account of early European experience in these islands, through material evidence offered by the archaeological record. As European exploration in the 1770s gave way to sealing, whaling and timber-felling, Pākehā visitors first became sojourners in small, remote camps, then settlers scattered around the coast. Over time, mission stations were established, alongside farms, businesses and industries, and eventually towns and government centres. Through these decades a small but growing Pākehā population lived within and alongside a Māori world, often interacting closely. This phase drew to a close in the 1850s, as the numbers of Pākehā began to exceed the Māori population, and the wars of the 1860s brought brutal transformation to the emerging society and its economy. Archaeologist Ian Smith tells the story of adaptation, change and continuity as two vastly different cultures learned to inhabit the same country. From the scant physical signs of first contact to the wealth of detail about daily life in established settlements, archaeological evidence amplifies the historical narrative. Glimpses of a world in the midst of turbulent change abound in this richly illustrated book. As the visual narrative makes clear, archaeology brings history into the present, making the past visible in the landscape around us and enabling an understanding of complex histories in the places we inhabit.

This book describes one of the most extraordinary and fascinating stories in NZ history. In the early part of the last century several thousand runaway seamen and escaped convicts settled in Maori communities. Jacky Mamon, John Rutherford, Charlotte Badger and many others - this is their largely untold story. They were regarded as unsavoury renegades by the European settlers, but amongst Maori they were usually welcomed. Many Pakeha Maori took wives and were treated as Maori, others were treated as slaves. Some received the moko, the facial or body tattoo. Others became virtual white chiefs and fought in battle with their adopted tribe. A few even fought against European soldiers, advising their fellow fighters about European infantry and artillery tactics. In this, the first-ever book devoted solely to the Pakeha Maori, Trevor Bentley describes in fascinating detail how the strangers entered Maori communities, adapted to tribal life and played a significant role in the merging of the two cultures.

Aotearoa New Zealand, “a tiny Pacific country,” is of great interest to those engaged in postcolonial and literary studies throughout the world. In all former colonies, myths of national identity are vested with various interests. Shifts in collective Pakeha (or New Zealand-European) identity have been marked by the phenomenal popularity of three novels, each at a time of massive social change. Late-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and the collapse of the idea of a singular ‘nation’ can be traced through the reception of John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939), Keri Hulme’s the bone people (1983), and Alan Duff’s Once Were Warriors (1990). Yet close analysis of these three novels also reveals marginalization and silencing in claims to singular Pakeha identity and a linear development of settler acculturation. Such a dynamic resonates with that of other ‘settler’ cultures – the similarities and differences telling in comparison. Specifically, Reading Pakeha? Fiction and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand explores how concepts of race and ethnicity intersect with those of gender, sex, and sexuality. This book also asks whether ‘Pakeha’ is still a meaningful term.

Striding Both Worlds illuminates European influences in the fiction of Witi Ihimaera, Aotearoa New Zealand’s foremost Māori writer, in order to question the common interpretation of Māori writing as displaying a distinctive Māori world-view and literary style. Far from being discrete endogenous units, all cultures and literatures arise out of constant interaction, engagement, and even friction. Thus, Māori culture since the 1970s has been shaped by a long history of interaction with colonial British, Pakeha, and other postcolonial and indigenous cultures. Māori sovereignty and renaissance movements have harnessed the structures of European modernity, nation-building, and, more recently, Western global capitalism, transculturation, and diaspora – contexts which contest New Zealand bicultural identity, encouraging Māori to express their difference and self-sufficiency. Ihimaera’s fiction has been largely viewed as embodying the specific values of Māori renaissance and biculturalism. However, Ihimaera, in his techniques, modes, and themes, is indebted to a wider range of literary influences than national literary critique accounts for. In taking an international literary perspective, this book draws critical attention to little-known or disregarded aspects such as Ihimaera’s love of opera, the extravagance of his baroque lyricism, his exploration of fantasy, and his increasing interest in taking Māori into the global arena. In revealing a broad range of cultural and aesthetic influences and inter-references commonly seen as irrelevant to contemporary Māori literature, Striding Both Worlds argues for a hitherto frequently overlooked and undervalued depth and complexity to Ihimaera’s imaginary. The present study argues that an emphasis on difference tends to lose sight of fiction’s capacity to appreciate originality and individuality in the polyphony of its very form and function. In effect, literary negotiation of Māori sovereign space takes place in its forms rather than in its content: the uniqueness of Māori literature is found in the way it uses the common tools of literary fiction, including language, imagery, the text’s relationship to reality, and the function of characterization. By interpeting aspects of Ihimaera’s oeuvre for what they share with other literatures in English, Striding Both Worlds aims to present an additional, complementary approach to Māori, New Zealand, and postcolonial literary analysis.

In Volume III, as in Volumes I and II, the classic topics of reading are included--from vocabulary and comprehension to reading instruction in the classroom--and, in addition, each contributor was asked to include a brief history that chronicles the legacies within each of the volume's many topics. However, on the whole, Volume III is not about tradition. Rather, it explores the verges of reading research between the time Volume II was published in 1991 and the research conducted after this date. The editors identified two broad themes as representing the myriad of verges that have emerged since Volumes I and II were published: (1) broadening the definition of reading, and (2) broadening the reading research program. The particulars of these new themes and topics are addressed.

One of the liveliest areas of research in the social sciences is reading. Scholarly activity is currently proceeding along a number of different disciplinary lines, addressing a multitude of questions and issues about reading. A short list of disciplines involved in the study of reading would include linguistics, psychology, education, history, and gerontology. Among the important questions being ad dressed are some long-standing concerns: How are reading skills acquired? What are the basic components of reading skill? How do skilled readers differ from less skilled ones? What are the best ways to approach instruction for different groups of readers-young beginning readers, poor readers with learning problems, and teenage and adult illiterates? How can reading skill best be measured-what standardized instruments and observational techniques are most useful? The large volume of textbooks and scholarly books that issue forth each year is clear evidence of the dynamic nature of the field. The purpose of this volume is to survey some of the best work going on in the field today and reflect what we know about reading as it unfolds across the life span. Reading is clearly an activity that spans each of our lives. Yet most accounts of it focus on some narrow period of development and fail to consider the range of questions that serious scholarship needs to address for us to have a richer under standing of reading. The book is divided into four parts.