Cushion designed by Native Agent
Last week, in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, I took a group of British friends to GBK, a New Zealand-owned burger restaurant. One of them asked me what a Kiwi Burger was, and I told him it would probably include beetroot, a slice of pineapple, and a fried egg. He ordered it ? and liked it ? though he was confused by the combination of ingredients, and said he?d never heard of such a thing before.
New Zealand: a country where we do/eat/say things that seem strange to other people, but make perfect sense to us.
In Frankfurt this year, it?s inevitable that some things will get lost or confused in translation ? not only from New Zealand to Germany, but in the other direction. That?s already happened. In June, after the press conference announcing the specifics of the Guest of Honour programme, Andreas Platthaus wrote a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that was picked up in the New Zealand media.
My German isn?t good enough to grasp every word of the original article, so ? like many New Zealanders ? I?ve relied on an English translation on Stephen Judd?s blog.?And, like many New Zealanders, I wasn?t happy to read Andreas Platthaus?s conclusions, which I think paint too simplistic a picture.
Firstly, the idea that books in the Maori language are a recent phenomenon is inaccurate: the first Maori-English dictionary was compiled in 1820, and the surge in Maori literacy in the first half of the nineteenth century was driven by the ever-increasing availability of books ? albeit mostly religious texts ? in Maori.
It?s true that today Maori-language publishing is a small piece of the overall publishing landscape in New Zealand, but that?s because Maori-speaking and English-speaking communities are no longer the separate entities they were a century-and-a-half ago. Andreas Platthaus talks about the Maori greetings employed at the Frankfurt press conference as ?obligatory? (?obligatorischen?) and ?compulsory? (?Pflicht?). But actually they?re just customary, because English and Maori are the two official languages of New Zealand, and because most of us speak a little Maori, if not a lot.
Radiare Whare - a work by Maori artist Rangi Kipa
He also talks about the sixty New Zealand authors coming to Frankfurt as ?obviously mostly English-speaking.? In fact we?re ALL English-speaking, whether we?re Maori or Pakeha (or both, or neither). There are complicated and often unhappy historical reasons for the dominance of the English language in New Zealand ? let?s just call it Imperialism, for now! ? but the relatively small number of fluent Maori speakers in New Zealand does not diminish the importance of Maori culture in and to New Zealand, or the importance to many of us of our Maori heritage and identity ? just as we don?t demand the Irish all speak fluent Gaelic, say, or that the Welsh are fluent in their own language in order to ?count? as the real thing.
At the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival in May, I attended a session in which Witi Ihimaera was interviewed by fellow writer Fiona Kidman. During the session, Witi mentioned something in passing about ?nine Maori novelists.? I scribbled this in my notebook, and later wondered: Only nine? Which nine? I could think of seven Maori novelists active today: Witi; Patricia Grace; Keri Hulme (still the only New Zealand Booker-Prize winner); Alan Duff; James George; Kelly Ana Morey; and me.
So I posted on Facebook asking for other ideas ? and was deluged with additional names: the late Dame Katerina Mataira, who wrote in Maori, and the late H. Pat Baker, who wrote historical novels; the feminist writer Renee, best known as a dramatist but also the author of novels and stories; poet, novelist and performer Michael O?Leary; Lisa Cherrington, author of ?The People-Faces?. Names from the past like June Mitchell; recent first-time novelists like Whiti Hereka and Isabel Waiti-Mulholland. My accomplished editor, John Huria, mentioned two YA novelists, Takuta Hohepa (Darren Joseph) and Mokena Reedy. I?m sure that there are people reading this blog post who could come up with many additional names.
Fellow author Rachael King wondered if Witi was talking about Maori novelists currently active; Kelly Ana Morey wondered if he meant Maori writers who?d written three or more novels. We all agreed that the list would be much longer if we could include Maori short story writers, or playwrights, or poets, or screenwriters, or nonfiction writers. I may have misheard or misunderstood Witi?s ?nine Maori novelists? comment. It?s easy, listening to people talk ? at festivals or at press conferences ? to get the wrong end of the stick, or to draw a simple conclusion from a more nuanced discussion.
After a number of very interesting conversations so far with German journalists, I wonder if it?s too easy for people to see Maori identity as one thing, or Maori experience as one thing, rather than a complex mess of differing points of view and personal/political histories. On the subject of contemporary Maori writers, I?d like to pass on these exciting piece of information. There are lots of us, writing across a variety of different art forms. We all speak English, though some of us are fluent, or at least more adept, in Maori than others. We don?t agree with each other. We don?t share one point of view. You?ll have a chance to hear us speak for ourselves at the Literaturfestival in Berlin on 12th September, where a number of us are taking part in an event called ?The Long Night of Maori Stories.?
Source: http://blog.book-fair.com/2012/08/27/there-are-lots-of-us/
the monkees strikeforce davy jones love actually miesha tate vs ronda rousey idiocracy deep impact
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.