Who Was That Woman Anyway? Snapshots of a Lesbian Life

by Aorewa McLeod

Emerging brittle and cynical from a wildly dysfunctional family, Ngaio careers from ice cream factory to children's home to Oxford to rehab. Along the way, she discovers herself and her sexuality -- at raucous parties with trainee nurses, in feminist encounter groups and Wiccan covens, in university classrooms and legendary sapphic hotspots. This novel delivers vivid and hilarious snapshots of late 20th Century lesbian life: witty, tender, frank.

Genres: Queer

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

Reviews

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aorewa schrijft haar leven in korte verhalen, deels echt en deels fictie. Ontzettend vlot en grappig geschreven, maar ook intens verdrietig soms. Ik wist eigenlijk niks over Nieuw Zeeland dus dat perspectief was mooi. Maar ook haar groei door de tijd heen als lesbienne, academicus en feminist was ontzettend mooi en waardevol om te lezen.

[Andrew Rumbles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aorewa McLeod recently described this book as an auto-mythography. Some of it is true and some of it is based on her life, but much of it is made up. In many ways it is the story of many women who during the 1970s discovered that they didn’t need men for validation, affection or identity.
This novel is the story of Ngaio, who we follow from her early days as a student, work at an ice cream factory and then as a nurse aide in Nelson and eventually her first romantic quests of the heart. That this Ngaio could be our author, Aorewa, in a parallel world, makes the text almost titillating. The journey is one of joyous self-discovery of life and her personality and needs. Her later professional life sees her teaching for many years at Auckland University. The real Aorewa did the same thing starting with teaching of esoteric papers in English of which she had no personal knowledge to becoming a senior expert with her own specialist topics.

The navigation of this male world in particular creates some blurred not so feminist scenarios for Ngaio. This and her personal life are shared with candour. Who she becomes as an Auckland lecturer is grounded on much exploration during her younger years in Nelson and at Oxford. The women and a few men she meets and becomes friends with shape her as does a fraught relationship with her own family. Many of us will find parallels to our own lives in this book.

A truly human storyteller it becomes tempting to believe that everything Ngaio is also everything Aorewa. So did Aorewa herself also freely sleep with women and men, misuse alcohol and dislike her mother? Well that is the question isn’t it? Who was that woman anyway?

[Jessica Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, especially seeing aspects of New Zealand and the world I never knew about. A bit of an unofficial lesbian history of NZ.