Mihipeka: Time of Turmoil : Ngā Wā Raruraru

by Mihi Edwards

This is the continuation of Aunty Mihi's story, begun in Mihipeka: Early Years. It is a powerful, honest and marvellously evocative view of New Zealand during World War II and the fifties, through the eyes of young Māori woman desperately trying to fit into the Pākehā system. (Cover blurb)

248 pages, Paperback

Published November 26, 1992

Reviews

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second volume in Edwards' three-part autobiography, Time of Turmoil covers the author's life from the 1940s through to the 1960s. Despite the efforts of the Maori Battalion during WW2, Maori were still seen very much as second-class citizens in New Zealand, and Edwards, capable of passing for white, did so for much of this volume. She had very much a double life going on - Maori to her family and those who knew her very well, and Pakeha to the rest of the world. It was a tactic for survival, she says so herself, but an ultimately damaging one, because how could it not be? She's caught between two worlds, a state of affairs not helped by two unhappy marriages - the first to a Maori, the second to a Pakeha - and it's both affecting and confronting to read. The slow realisation that this double life, this false identification, isn't something she wants to continue, and her efforts to learn again the value of what was (literally) beaten out of her as a child... she comes across, during this book, as just so genuinely brave in grappling with her history and in finding a path forward. It's impossible not to admire her for it.