Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

by Christina Thompson

In this involving, compassionate memoir, Christina Thompson tells the story of her romance and eventual marriage to a Maori man, interspersing it with a narrative history of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Travel, Biography, Audiobook, Anthropology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Christina Thompson writes about the history of the Pacific. Her first book, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, was at once a history contact in Aotearoa/New Zealand and a memoir of her marriage to a Maori man. Her second book, Sea People, is a history of the settlement of remote Oceania by the ancestors of the Polynesian people. It won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and the 2019 NSW Premier’s General History Award, and was a finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (US), the Mountbatten Maritime Award (UK), the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, (US) and the Queensland Literary Award (AUS). A dual citizen of the US and Australia, she is the editor of Harvard Review and teaches writing and editing at Harvard University Extension.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[rex · Rating 1 out of 5]

if this was a dark satire on the racism white people can bring to interracial relationships then it would be brutal and incredible, but. uh. it's somehow not?

white upper class american woman faffs around during her english degree, goes to new zealand, sees "a maori" at a bar (not "a maori man" "a maori woman" "a maori author"-- this continues through the book) for the first time, and inserts herself into their history as a scribe despite no request to do so

half the book is retelling the history of white contact with maori, entirely from the perspective of the white side, no interviews with maori historians or anything, and the other half is the story of her life with her shiny new ~exotic~ husband, and woo fuckin boy is that half a DOOZY

highlights include:

-their physicality being the only thing described-- men are fearsome, hulking, muscular; her mother in law is a "famished-looking creature" (the exception is when she describes their fickle cunning; then they can be shrewd and "lie like the devil"-- a change from their otherwise "naturally innocent" natures)

-uses the term "half-caste". just drops that out there and continues.

-describes the first maori house she visits as a flophouse and goes on about how unsafe she feels (despite later mentioning that it's a perfectly normal clean and tidy suburban home)

-someone there mentions that he's looking for a lost earring; she gives him one of hers right out of her ear to replace it, then rhapsodises for paragraphs about how the first settlers must have felt making this sort of first contact

-she never once mentions being in love with her husband. not once sentence about affection, or dating, or desire, or love. i'm not kidding-- not a single fucking one. every description of him is from a removed distance, like he's a test subject or pet, as she describes his oversized giant hulking form wandering around american streets and copping racism (people moving away from him in the street, gossiping about him in their small town, turning him away from job openings-- and for that one she attempts to crusade against the company's racism, despite her husband not wanting her to)

-gets her hands on a photo of severed maori heads, and delights in showing them to her new family members. when her sister in law is disgusted and says it's because the heads are ancestors stolen by white people and put on show as trophies, the author wonders what sil's "really" upset about, because it happened so long ago that sil couldn't possibly have known the people in the photo (???????????????)

-"there were moments-- days when i would come home from the university to find seven and kura stretched out on the floor watching monster trucks on tv-- when i would look at them and think you people. then i'd do a double take and think what, do i want them to be just like me? of course i didn't."

-"the place i really struggled with ["improving" her in-laws] was with seven's sister, who was almost ten years younger than i and whom, i felt, i was in a position to influence. on the one hand, it was perfectly clear to me that if she didn't get an education, she was doomed-- at the very least to a lifetime of poverty, but also, in my mind, to something more serious. without a foundation of skills and knowledge, she would have no chance of discovering what she was good at or experiencing the satisfaction of making choices for herself." hhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

-(this ~tragique~ lack of an education? is not doing the optional high school years 11+12. plenty of people here don't do them. i didn't do them! but i guess we should all listen to the english phd who got her parents to pay her bills into her 40s, she'll definitely have a good understanding of the labour market)

-enrolling her sons into an aussie school then making a weeping bleating fuss about how lonely it was even while describing the other mothers trying to make friends with her and involve her in the community-- then mentioning that there were other places nearby where she "might have felt more at home-- where the mothers might have been more like me", but, the kicker: "but we couldn't afford to live in any of them". oh no the fuckin cruel deprivations of having to live around lower class people instead of her own kind, she just couldn't relate to them, what a crisis :(((((

-eventually she has enough of life in australia and decides that her kids need to be bought up around family and a support network-- so she moves back to america. there's never any discussion about the large family they have in nz.

-it's a small thing, but there's a bit where she mentions that her husband "had gotten a job, but not much of one"-- a sneery little line-- then later mentioning that she's bringing in herself a grand total of $15k a year. stones/glasshouses dumbass

-the last bit of the book goes into a bizarre tangent about her family's history in america, including the fact that an ancestor committed the largest mass execution of native americans-- but "none of us [in the family] could say with complete honest that we wished it had been any other way", because her family got a lot of land out of it

-she writes a letter for her sons to read in the case of her eventual death (she's not sick or anything-- i guess the drama tank must have been getting low that week), the bulk of which goes on not about how much they're loved, but instead about hybrid vigour and cross-breeding, because that is definitely a healthy respectful and not racist at all way to think about your children

-and it ends with:
"i confessed to one of his brothers that i was concocting a plan.
'you know what i'm going to do?' i said to him.
'what's that, sis?'
'i'm going to write your family story.'
'write your own first,' he said without missing a beat."
but then she does it anyway because of course. of course she does.

there's more but it all blurs together into one big racist zoetrope. i don't usually write reviews but this book gave me the creeps BIGTIME, it was a horror played completely straight, each memoir segment the direct descendant of each colonialist segment, themes and tropes of colonialism replayed right down the barrel, but with the author seemingly having no fucking idea at all that she was doing so

i don't even know who'd want to read this. if you want books that look at modern maori life or colonial history then you can find many out there by maori authors; if you want to read a cavalcade of incoherent white saviour wasp garbage then i recommend not doing that and maybe just patting a dog instead

[Meaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Christina Thompson has a PhD in Pacific Literature and the book definitely has a literary style, but the topic is more historical/anthropological. Certainly it's part memoir also, but I think the majority of page space is taken up by her history of the Maori people. Then at the end she throws in a history of her own white American relatives and the white settlers' obliteration of the Native American tribes. I understand we're meant to draw a parallel between that and the Maori history of colonial exploitation, but it really didn't belong.

The memoir parts of the book seemed quite insubstantial to me. I couldn't get a sense of how she was feeling at different parts of the story, and her husband had no personality at all. She seemed to drift into cohabitation and marriage with him much the same way she drifted randomly into the bar where they met. Obviously she loves the guy -- they've been married twenty years, moved back and forth across the equator innumerable times, have three kids, yada yada -- but I don't get any sense of their love. She seems to focus much more on how little she and her husband have in common, in terms of appearance, family background, cultural heritage, education, interests...

Possibly I am being overcritical. I don't think this was a bad book. In fact I really enjoyed reading it and learning about a people I previously knew little of. I just think it needed a lot more focus, mainly.

[Alexis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deeply flawed, reductionist view of Maori and the greater Polynesian population penned by a pretentious, insensitive author blind to her own not-so-subtle classist tendencies. The book is rife with hypocrisy, laughably ironic and at times, shockingly disrespectful.

The narrative begins with Thompson traveling to New Zealand and meeting “a Maori”, who would become her husband. Throughout the book, the reader gets only a narrow and impersonal view of this man who is a central piece of the story. Even his name, Tauwhitu, is too difficult, so she simply refers to him as “Seven”. Instead of introducing us to an individual, Thompson reduces her husband to a caricature, a generalization of not only, in her opinion, all Maori, but of Polynesians as a whole: he’s big, dark, with large arms and legs, laid-back, but also a natural-born fighter, he lacks ambition or any disinterested curiosity, he’s largely unskilled and has very few thoughts about the future. What we’re left with is the impression not of a unique person, someone who the author knows intimately and loves, but of an “insert any Maori that conforms to sweeping, disrespectful stereotypes here” model. Seven, it seems, is a sample specimen, a living, breathing trinket from her far flung travels. Indeed, in regard to time spent with Seven, she goes so far as to tell one professor, “You could call it fieldwork.”

Sometimes these cultural differences with her specimen husband cause problems. When Thompson admits that she is finally forced to “acknowledge the issue of class” between them, the book’s racist undertones become more apparent: “There were moments - days when I would come home from the university and find Seven and Kura [his sister] on the floor watching monster trucks on TV - when I would look at them and think, you people."

Thompson also cannot seem to comprehend Seven’s sister’s shock and disgust upon seeing a photograph depicting 34 Maori heads mounted on a wall like trophy animals. Thompson, who considers the photograph a prized possession, explains, “The heads were not of her grandparents, they were probably not even members of her tribe,” so why would she be so appalled? Never mind that only the slightest amount of empathy is required to understand that those heads belonged to someone’s grandparents, fellow human beings; regardless of whether they were a direct relation or not, basic decency should elicit a reaction of at least some distress.

Thompson’s lack of humanity continues to be jarring. Near the end of the book, she suddenly veers away from the established (albeit shaky) direction of her message and delves into a discussion and defense of her mother’s ancestors, one of whom was a confirmed “Indian-killer”. She paints an all but glowing picture of dear old Great Great Uncle Sibley who was part of the “haute bourgeoisie” of the newly established city of St. Paul... and who also carried out the heinous mass hanging of 38 Sioux Indians in 1862. She goes on to say that yes, sure, while this remains a “bitter joke” (?!) within the family, she admits that given the choice, she’d have wished it to be no other way, as “privilege comes at a cost and it was the Dakotas and Pennacooks and Pawtuckets who paid the price of our family’s prosperity.” Are you kidding me?

Even the historical commentary throughout the book, while informative and interesting, is nothing noteworthy. It is merely a regurgitation of Maori history pieced together from previously published authoritative sources: Salmond, Scott and the like.

In short, this meandering and shallow story adds nothing to the study or understanding of Maori culture, past, present or future. Irresponsible and self-indulgent, this book is at best ridiculous, at worst, a shameful perpetuation of the very stereotypes and reductionist attitudes that led to the destruction of so many indigenous peoples the world over. Frankly, I was just disgusted by it.

[Lindaanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neo-colonial hogwash. I'm planning a trip to New Zealand and from the title and description thought "Come on Shore....." would be a colorful account of a woman's adventures in New Zealand. Instead the author chose to write a narcissistic memoir of her own privileged WASP upbringing in New England replete with boring DAR family history, her academic achievement in Pacific Literature (is that even a thing?) and marriage to a Maori man she met while on vacation there. The latter theme was interspersed with dry New Zealand history so the book didn't flow. Ms. Thompson chose to harp on her husband's physical grandeur (handsome, well muscled, glossy hair etc.) while patronizing his other pleasant but childlike attributes, especially his lack of formal education relative to her own lofty level. I found that repugnant and reminiscent of the "Noble Savage" mindset that our society should have evolved from long ago. The author's repeated whining about money issues was particularly galling, especially given the fact that she received lots of family help and lives in an inherited manse. Ms. Thompson writes very well and the book could have been very good but it wasn't.

[Sash Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

‘Incoherent white saviour wasp garbage’ is an accurate description of this steaming pile of shit. I am embarrassed to have read this book in public. I can’t believe the back of this book describes it as ‘a sensitive portrayal’. Full of racism, stereotypes and fetishization of colonialism and the Maori people. She describes her own husband as exotic like a thousand times, and doesn’t describe any love or dating or anything between them despite billing this book as a love story. Just absolute trash.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that it took me forever to read this book should in no way be regarded as criticism of it. Life got away from me for a while. It's an excellent book.

The blurb explaining how it's a memoir of a cross cultural marriage can not even begin to contain all that's in this book. The author is an American woman with a PhD married to a working class Maori New Zealander. While it does explore what it means to have a marriage between people of such divergent backgrounds it's so much more than that.

Thompson shares a great deal of historical and cultural background as she chronicles the development of her relationship with her husband. She examines the various influences the shaped each culture and how their respective cultures shape she and her husband in ways few people ever have to consider.

She admits to a having begun with a fairly romantic view of Maori culture during her early experiences and shares how reality eventually brought her to a more honest assessment of things without ever loosing a sense of respect. In a way, her love affair with the culture very much paralleled the way a courtship would progress, hopefully into a mature affection based on respect, in to an enduring marriage.

In the end she is challenged by an in-law to dig into her own history as much as she has dug into theirs. What she finds as the descendant of a colonizer is shocking and gives even more texture to her understanding of living as and being married to one who has suffered due to colonization.

It's a wonderfully rich exploration of all the history two people can carry into a relationship presented in an even, rational manner. At times the historical background she lays down can bog a bit but ultimately it is all useful in understanding her insights and observations.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of my New Zealand November 2015 project, only, um, I read it in December. I hadn't gotten to it in November and after trying the first 50 pages decided it was worthwhile to go ahead and finish it.

This is part memoir, part history. The author writes of her graduate school years when she took a break from her dissertation writing and graduate school in Australia and visited New Zealand for the first time. While at a bar she met her future husband, a Maori man who happened to be next to her when they witnessed a brawl. Christina Thompson uses the "clash" of cultures as a jumping off point to discuss the clash between Europeans "discovering" and "settling" New Zealand and the native populations.

I'm not sure if the author just wasn't completely honest about her self and her experience or if she truly is the go-with-the-flow, happy-go-lucky she portrays herself as in the book. Because of the title and the parallels with the history, I was expecting her story to be quite a bit more interesting. Her greatest conflict seems to be with her dissertation advisor who didn't believe her own experiences with literature (and the places it was written) should figure into her graduate work. She and her husband seem to do just fine despite different personalities, very different backgrounds, financial challenges, frequent moves, and coming from opposite sides of the globe. Basically her own story was just not that interesting. I wanted it to be!

I did appreciate her overview of New Zealand's history with tastes of ethnography thrown in, and that part of the book would probably give a good overview to someone new to reading about the country.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is... pretty racist?

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Are you kidding me?

I have to preface this review by stating that I am currently a Ph.D. student that is working with Maori literature--but I also read this for a Travel Narratives course. Let me just say, I have no idea where you would shelve this book in a physical book store (and that's only the start of my problems with this book).

This is often discussed as "travel writing" but there is very little actual travel talked about in the book that the author actually did. Most of the "travel" is her stringing together of historical documents about colonization of the Maori people--none of which she was a part of. Add to this that sometimes she will try to cite her information and others she just lets you turn to the back of the book if you want to attempt to find what she is referencing--and her references often lack pertinent information (ie: the page numbers where she is finding these things) and then there are other things she mentions but never cites. It was like she couldn't decide if she was making a travel narrative, a memoir, or a scholarly article/thesis.

It really is not a memoir either, as she goes back and forth trying to weave in Maori history (which is not her own). She seems to think that she can speak for the Maori in certain passages, and then in others mentions that she cannot speak for all Maori. Really wish she would have picked what she was doing prior to writing. Despite some of the reviews on the back, this certainly is not "anthropology" or even "Cultural history" that is being written. It is a hodge-podge of drivel.

My biggest problem though revolves around Thompson's depiction of the Maori people. Others have mentioned the negative title in their reviews--I agree. I can see where the title may draw readers in, but it less-than-appealing in terms of describing Maori culture. After all, Thompson goes back and forth talking about Maori cannibalism in her book. At first she states that "Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all" was something the Maori famously said to keep invaders away from their homes. But later she'll tell you this is something that Cook wrote down, and Darwin may have added to, and that no one can really know if this was ever said. Right... so maybe don't leave that information to the last twenty pages? Or maybe don't perpetuate this negative perception if you don't need to just to sell a few more books?

Thompson's claim to being able to write this book is she is deeply interested in Maori culture. I don't necessarily feel that when I read the book. It seems like she just married a Maori man (and, please be advised that there is no great love story here -- lots of showing versus telling goes on, and I never even saw a real love-connection between Thompson and her husband, Seven). What do we know about Seven? I can tell you that he is attractive, because this is basically the only thing Thompson says over and over again. We know that he has trouble finding jobs because he is Maori. We know that sometimes Thompson herself looks down on her husband--problematic for me as a reader.

Nothing here really adds to Maori studies. It is not a real travel narrative or a memoir. There is no brilliant love story about a traveler that bumps into a Maori man and falls in love with him (keep in mind, she forces him to move away from his home and follow her around as she tries to find teaching jobs--hmm). I don't know what this book is, but I know that everything it claims to be it is not and it is just tedious to read.

[Mindy McAdams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel two ways about this book. On the one side, it offers up a very satisfying history of the Maori people in New Zealand for a layman to read — episodic rather than chronological, emphasizing key events but not pedantically enumerating them, almost conversational in style. On the other, it's got a first-person thread running all the way through it that frequently made me feel uncomfortable. Even my uncomfortableness made me uncomfortable, because I wondered if I was just having an overly politically correct reaction to my own conflicted feelings about this American Ph.D. candidate popping into New Zealand and hooking up with a Maori guy whom she ends up marrying.

Part of my problem was I felt like the book wanted to be two things at once, and I wanted it to either have much more of the author's personal life or much less, but not the amount it has. I think that's just me being nosy. If you're going to imply that you've had a rich, fulfilling marriage for 20 years with a man whom you continually describe as super different from you, I want more details to make me believe it. If you're just going to drop him and your differences in as a little highlight now and then to some point you're making about Maori culture, then that seems unfair to the reader.

Overall I liked the writing, the pacing, and the history parts. I liked seeing glimpses of the author's husband, but I certainly don't feel like I understand him or his family as individuals. I also suspect that if this were the very first thing having to do with the Maori that I had ever read, I would have been frustrated by all the gaps and assumptions. In other words, I liked it fairly well for how it added to and enhanced some knowledge I already had, but I think I'd have liked it less if I'd read it two years ago, before I visited New Zealand and read a few books by New Zealand authors.

[Shelby Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot of very interesting history, but many parts of this book felt icky. Not sure the memoir/nonfiction combo worked here.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I love the mix of history intertwined with a story of love and family. This is a memoir of the quest of discovering who we are and who our love is. How love spans the test of time through history...past, present and future. That love is not confined to boundaries like culture and societal expectations. Beautifully written and well-researched....a wonderful peek at the world and how we all fit in it.
FURTHER PROCESSING:
It has been about a month since I finished this book and I am still thinking about it. I love that it has had that effect on me. Not only have I gotten out my movie of Whale Rider but I have watched it with my 4 year-old daughters and now they are asking for it every day. LOL!!!

What I find myself reflecting on the most is how parallel my life is with the author's life and story but in a completely different way...if that makes any sense. I am appreciating MY STORY that much more. I am also feeling validated at my efforts to share my ancestry with my children...as well as my husband's ancestry. I have unconsciously been doing this since they have been born. I no longer feel like an intruder in this process...I feel as if I belong and have a right to be introducing my family to their ancestry though I personally did not grow up in their culture. Being Native American but raised in a German home and culture far from the reservation, my only experience about ME and my PEOPLE was in school and that was limited and only a brushing of truth. Now as a mom, I take my children to a Pow-Wow every summer and tell them this is a part of US. Living in Mexico now is a big part of our family learning about our roots. I think we are learning how to fit in our "skins" and be proud of the people we are...the people we were born to be. Mexican-Native American on my side and Mexican-Peruvian on my husband's.

I see "Come on Shore...." now, not only as a love story between the author and her husband, but also as a love story for her children. What a beautiful journey she is taking them on as they live in the world. Truly, it is our children who will be better people for it.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally read this book 11 years ago, and didn't write a review when I finished it, even though I gave it five stars—shame on me!

Last year, after reading Christina Thompson's more recent book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, I remembered that I had read her first book and enjoyed it, and decided that I wanted to revisit it. I finally did that this month. Come on Shore... is a combined memoir and a history of the Maori people of New Zealand. I've been to New Zealand and was fascinated with Maori culture, so the history sections were definitely interesting to me. I was even more intrigued by Thompson's own story of her relationship and marriage to Seven, a Maori from the Bay of Islands area on the North Island.

This book definitely deserves my original five-star rating. Highly recommended!

[christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such promise in this half history/half memoir premise. The saving aspect is the NZ history, which is handled less deftly than I'd hoped. {If NZ history interests you, head for Keith Sinclair's book}. Superficial, clinical statements are offered up as memoir here. There is little depth or warmth to Thompson's personal writing, and readers are given no indication she loves, or even cares about, the man she married, and he is featured prominently. Her descriptions of him are consistently framed against a backdrop of OTHER. Surely, she loves him for actual qualities, not simply his Otherness? The reader wouldn't know; she paints him as little more than generalized sociological and race-based adjectives regarding his build, his facial features, his skin tone, etc. He never materializes as a fully-actualized person and, for that matter, neither does the author.

[Alohatiki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really into this book about an American woman who marries a Maori. And then she spent the last few chapters covering her families American history, snooze. I guess she just ran out of stuff to talk about. I like the history of Polynesian Islands since i read all that stuff normally. So really 4 stars until the American history part.

[Mollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All as part of the Goodreads giveaway program and was pleasantly surprised. What I expected to be a rather fluffy love story (and I enjoy a prince charming as much as the next person) in a great setting was instead a very readable overview of New Zealand history embedded in one woman's story. The writing exceeded my expectations, the research was substantive (supported by her professional academic work on the topic) and the story was reflectively honest.

As several other reviewers mention, the last chapter of her family history seemed a bit awkward or at least awkwardly placed. However, I do see the value for Thompson to reflect on her own family history, home culture and colonial heritage. It is what strengthens the reflective process. It provides added awareness and depth to the cultural lens she uses.

I would recommend it to people interested in learning a little bit about New Zealand and its cultural history as well people who enjoy travel memoirs. I continue to debate whether I wish I had read it before I went to New Zealand or am grateful to have been to the country before I this perspective on cultural/political history. Either way would shape the lens through which one views a new country and culture. I don't think, however, that it makes a substantive difference.

I will definitely be passing this book along...

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelly, thank you for loaning me this book, you knew I'd love it!! How do you not love a story that starts with a hatpin through Boston to the other side of the globe, includes a love story that begins with a bar fight between a Maori and a Pakeha, and ultimately is an entertaining and quirky commentary on the long-term effects of colonization (or "civilizing" uncharted land as our adventurous European ancestors liked to think of it).
One of my favorite lines in this book is on p. 87 and starts: "But shift the lens ever so slightly..." What I really loved is that the author is clearly very knowledgable, and presents factual information about the Maori people and their history, but she looks at the story from both sides. Thompson blends her own American upbringing and European ancestral point-of-view with that of her Maori husband's (and now her childrens').
As a side note, I found the chapter about returning to America and finding out she's pregnant (with no health insurance) was one of my favorite parts and was so current . When she talks about how Seven doesn't realize the seriousness of the situation because he'd grown up with Nationalized healthcare, I got goose bumps. Pretty relevant to today's current events...

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book resonated with me on so many levels: I come from a mixed racial & cultural background; grew up in a household of academics; lived in many places as a child (including Hawaii & Australia) and have parents from different socio-economic backgrounds. Rarely have I found a book so intelligently and perceptively written that tackles the many ways in which our personal and national histories, cultural conditioning, and class expectations create unexpected challenges as we go out into the world and form relationships with others, particularly romantic ones. The historical details about the Maori are as fascinating as the personal narrative of her life. Thompson is also extraordinarily sensitive about telling her own story without intruding on the privacy of her in-laws. She conveys much of importance about their lives without betraying their confidences (something that has made me uncomfortable while reading other memoirs). This is the perfect book for anyone interested in anthropology, Third Culture Kids, current issues affecting indigenous populations, and cross-cultural relationships.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is two books mixed in one, with possibly the word's most unfortunate choice for a title. It's partly the history of the Maoris of New Zealand in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and partly
of the author's marriage to a Maori man she met in a bar while vacationing in New Zealand.
I found the history of the Europeans' first contact with the Maori to be interesting and the troubled realtions between the two vastly different cultures even more so. The author's personal accounts of her family life were only barely relevant. After realizing I could skip those bits and read only the well researched and very well written
historical bits, I enjoyed the book very much.

I received this book for free to review.

[Rebecca Huston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I both liked and detested this book. A narrative that mixes the author's meeting her Maori husband and the life they built together in Boston and Australia, with too-brief snippets about the Maori encounters with Europeans. Parts of this book did work, but by the end, I was left with very mixed feelings. Only three stars and only somewhat recommended.

For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.epinions.com/review/Book_C...

[P K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because Sea People was one of my favorite books last year, and was interested to learn more about Polynesian history through the lens of Thompson's personal experiences. However, I did not like this book.

Thompson uses the thread of her marriage to a Maori man as a parallel to discuss the history of contact between the first people of New Zealand and Europeans, but quite heavy on the personal experience side. She weaves together elements like the story of Omai, the first Polynesian to come to England, and her husband (Seven)'s residence in Boston with her. Both men were greatly admired, which Thompson found unexpected given their lack of "how things are done." Thompson and Seven have children together, and her discussion of her role in their cultural upbringing is somewhat interesting.

The discussion of mokomokai, the shrunken and preserved heard of high ranking Maori people, was perhaps the most interesting part of the book to me. Previously, high ranking members were given facial tattoos, and when they died, their heads would be preserved and kept as family heirlooms. Occasionally, heads of enemies would be traded as important parts of peacekeeping deals. However, Europeans developed a macabre interest in these heads, which led to a bastardization of the tradition into something utterly grotesque: the raiding and killing of other tribe members and falsely tattooing the face to pass it off as a genuine mokomokai. The incentive to do this was immense, given that Europeans were willing to trade firearms for them, which post-colonialization quickly became a necessary item for protection.

I think the thing about this book that really hit the wrong note with me was the treatment of the storytelling. Thompson makes it clear from the beginning that she is not making an effort to include the voices of Maori people in the story in this particular telling, laboring to explain to the reader that this is only her story, and not THE story. I guess I understand the impulse not to speak for others, but given that the Maori people in her story don't have a platform likely to reach a lot of people, and the fact that she portrays them pretty one-dimensionally and not particularly flatteringly, it felt kind of weird to me to read her story.

Anyway, read Sea People, it's amazing. This book needs some work.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting blend of memoir and historical nonfiction that explores colonization both within an intimate relationship and throughout the broad sweep of history. It is necessarily lopsided toward the Western perspective by nature of the author and historical record, and I couldn’t help but wish for more from the Māori side of things.

[Annika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love all of her writing.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good view into how outsiders may think about Maori people and their culture.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I searched for history books that gave either the past history, or current culture, of the Pacific Islands. The population I taught had large numbers of Islander kids in it, and they would be the first to tell you, their culture and history is NOTHING like that of people called "Asian", i.e., China, Japan, Korea...maybe a teensy bit more like Cambodia.

This fabulous book, listed under "anthropology" (a part of the book store I never go! Good thing I saw it reviewed and went looking for it!), gives an insightful and caring chronology from the early Maoris (an indigenous people who were insightful and suspicious enough NOT to be friendly toward the British crews who came to "claim" their islands for the crown) to the present-day life there. *spoilers from here on*

The writer stayed long enough to fall in love with, and marry, one of the citizens there, and she gained insights that many of us would not have, if we simply traveled there to write a thesis and get out again.

I encourage you to read this book (you will need a strong sense of geography and a fresh, untired mind), and draw your own conclusions.

[Caroline Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing that struck me most about this book, with the wonderful title, subtitled: A New Zealand Story, is that the author, an academic, wears her credentials lightly and writes beautifully. Her synthesis of South Seas colonial history and her personal journey to fulfill a PhD, marrying and raising a family with a Maori man, and finally, with a perfectly paced whammo, her own ancestor's pivotal role in the US West is so skillfully done that the book reads like a historical novel in two parts.
Which is not to say that it is melodramatic, not in the least. It is impeccably researched, as the selected bibliography indicates, and it is that rare thing, the work of a renegade academic who is not a raving ego on the rampage! Early in her career as a grad student, there are attempts to curtail her curiosity, her urge to include more; more of real life, in her own life and in her studies, rather than sticking to a narrow thesis.
For this unerring search for the truth of things and the complications of life, then and now, we should all be grateful readers. Wonderful book!

[Gretchen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very unsatisfying. I picked this up from the library hoping for a history of New Zealand colonization, but instead it was a rambling memoir of the author's trips to Australia and New Zealand, mixed briefly with history only as it related to her personal experiences, which were not in any kind of order. Disappointing, stopped reading it after fifty or so pages.

[Rmslis · Rating 4 out of 5]

No, this isn’t a zombie beach tale. This is part memoir part historical work. While the author was attending graduate school in Australia she made a side trip to New Zealand where she met her future husband who is a full blooded Maori. Despite the extreme differences between the two - she, middle class white from Boston with an advanced degree, he of the lower socioeconomic strata typical of Maoris in New Zealand, and having only a high school education - they met, fell in love, got married, raised a family, and at the time of the publication of the book in 2008, a couple of decades later, were still together.

I was concerned that the book would read more like a biographical romance and hesitated to get it, but glad I did. Rather, the book was pretty much equal parts early history of New Zealand - at least with respect to the early contact with the native Māoris - an accounting of the author’s life with respect to her interest in Oceania resulting in her pursuit of graduate studies in this topic, and her life after meeting her husband. The title of the book is purportedly what the Maoris yelled to the seafaring explorers on their ship when the very first ship with white men was first sighted off the shores of New Zealand. Admittedly, a very catchy title. With regard to the historical portions, the author provided just enough information to make the reading interesting without it becoming too academic. I would have liked the author to have included more information about the Māoris in present day New Zealand and also to include more information about her husband and his opinion and views toward their living arrangements over the years as the book is relatively silent in these areas. Also, as the author was describing their lives over the years she never included anything of a cultural significance, e.g. technology, current events, consumer goods, media productions, etc. that the reader could have used as a benchmark to ascertain the approximate year in which the events were taking place. Only after the reader is done with the main tale and continues reading the acknowledgments at the end of the book will the reader learn the approximate span of years in which the events had occurred of the author’s life with respect to meeting her husband and their life that follows. Overall, the book was interesting and held my attention. I would give it a three and a half star review but bump it up to four stars.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia I became rather curious about Christina Thompson's life. I looked at what else she had written and was happy to see she'd written a memoir. It is a bit of a hodge-podge jumping around present and past for both her her family background and that of her Maori husband. This is a memoir of a relatively young person. Most of her relatives are still alive so nearly everyone is described in a positive way. Still, it was interesting and answered the questions I had after reading Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia.

[Kara of BookishBytes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was skeptical that a personal memoir could be successfully woven through with the early history of New Zealand. The idea seemed clunky and awkward. But Ms. Thompson does it beautifully. I felt compelled to stay up late to finish this one. It balances history with sociology (particularly a discussion of socioeconomic disadvantage and racial prejudice faced by the Maori in New Zealand) with the personal account of the author’s romance with and marriage to her Maori husband. (Ms. Thompson is a white American from Boston.)

Plus, it wins the award for best title! It is a quote (perhaps not translated entirely correctly, Ms. Thompson explains) of what the Maori said to the sailors aboard one of the earliest European ships to visit New Zealand.