Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Potsdam (Institut fuer Anglistik), course: Historiography and Trauma in Recent Maori Literature, language: English, abstract: This essay explores the representation of Maori women in two novels written by Maori authors. One book is the highly controversial and bestselling novel of Alan Duff “Once Were Warriors”, which was first published in 1990 and later turned into a movie adaption by Lee Tamahori. The other book I will focus on is written by the famous author Patricia Grace, who is known for creating stories with powerful women characters. The title of the book is “Baby Noeyes” and it was first published in 1998. Both novels deal with resistance and social change and we can find representations of strong Maori having a positive influence on their family and their environment. The main struggles with effects of colonialism and imperialism after the English settlers arrived are topics in both books. The main characters Te Paania and Beth Heke seem to be very different at the beginning, but both represent the ideal of a Maori women, being a leader and a warrior. In the next chapters I want to give a short introduction to the social status of Maori women in New Zealand before the colonization and after the English settlers arrived. Then I will compare the characters of Beth Heke from the novel “Once were Warriors” and Te Paania from the novel “Baby Noeyes”. I want to focus mainly on their struggles and the finding of solutions for their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their family. Finally, in the last chapters I want to draw a conclusion and find out, in how far the representation of the Maori women serve each novel’s wider political project.

New Zealand The Wonder Country" that is the title of Margaret McClures book published in Auckland 2004. In her book McClure describes the fascinating landmarks and tourist sites of New Zealand.In contrast to that Lee Tamahori designs a rather sober picture of New Zealand and its aboriginal citizens decendants respectively, the Maori, with his film adaption of Allan Duffs Once were warriors." Already in 1990 Duffs novel was traded as highly controversial and bestselling. Tamahoris adaption of this novel won more than 15 international film awards. The seven-man family is about to collapse since the father Jake The Muss" Heke is alcohol addicted and once again lost his job at the beginning of the movie. Since eighteen years he constantly beats up his wife Beth Heke when he is drunk. Although the two youngest children seem to be untouched by the miserable family background, the eldest son Nig joins a gang. His younger brother Marc, also known as Boogie, becomes re-offended when he is caught prising a car again. In the course of his misbehaviour he is sent to an approved school. Just the oldest daughter, Grace, seems to have a future since she succeeds in school and writes short stories. However, as it ought to turn out the family is shattered by the rape of Grace and her suicide. Not until its revealed that a friend of Jake, Bully, who calls himself Grace' uncle, raped Grace Beth draws the conclusion to leave Jake. The movie was published in Germany under the name Die letzte Kriegerin" with a distinct focus on the main character Beth Heke. It was often discussed whether this titel fits the movie and hits the essence of the film.

This major new interdisciplinary study focuses on the representation of the body in the work of eight of Polynesia's most significant contemporary writers. Drawing on anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and medicine, Postcolonial Pacific Writing develops an innovative postcolonial framework specific to the literatures and cultures of this region.

This study brings together three closely related aspects of Maori literature - myth, memory and identity. It examines selected novels by Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace in order to trace an ever-developing Maori identity that has changed considerably over three decades of the Maori novel. This book demonstrates that an investigation of the construction of identity in literature benefits from a close look at the importance of Maori mythology as well as associated cultural and individual memories. Indicating that Maori fiction has become what Homi Bhabha terms a third space, this book verifies the links between novel, myth and memory with the help of existing research in these areas in order to assess their importance for the reinterpretation of identity. The Maori novels that depict situations reflecting current issues are viewed as an experimental playground in which authors can explore a variety of solutions to tribal, societal and political issues. This study establishes the early novels as reinterpretations of the past and guides to the future, and characterises the more recent novels as representing a move towards empowerment and pioneering that has not yet come to a conclusion.

This classic has been released in the Popular Penguin format to mark 50 years of publishing in New Zealand. The format reaches further back to 1935, when Allen Lane founded Penguin Books with a clear vision- 'We believed in the existence of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.' Ground-breaking. Original. Heart-rending. Most talked about book in New Zealand, ever. Adapted into a blockbuster movie. Still in print three decades later.

Elizabeth DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean (‘tidalectics’) to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along—at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature. —Vilsoni Hereniko, University of Hawai‘i "Elizabeth DeLoughrey brings contemporary hybridity, diaspora, and globalization theory to bear on ideas of indigeneity to show the complexities of ‘native’ identities and rights and their grounded opposition as ‘indigenous regionalism’ to free-floating globalized cosmopolitanism. Her models are instructive for all postcolonial readers in an age of transnational migrations." —Paul Sharrad, University of Wollongong, Australia Routes and Roots is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the "tidalectic" between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots. The first section looks at the sea as history in literatures of the Atlantic middle passage and Pacific Island voyaging, theorizing the transoceanic imaginary. The second section turns to the land to examine indigenous epistemologies in nation-building literatures. Both sections are particularly attentive to the ways in which the metaphors of routes and roots are gendered, exploring how masculine travelers are naturalized through their voyages across feminized lands and seas. This methodology of charting transoceanic migration and landfall helps elucidate how theories and people travel, positioning island cultures in the world historical process. In fact, DeLoughrey demonstrates how these tropical island cultures helped constitute the very metropoles that deemed them peripheral to modernity. Fresh in its ideas, original in its approach, Routes and Roots engages broadly with history, anthropology, and feminist, postcolonial, Caribbean, and Pacific literary and cultural studies. It productively traverses diaspora and indigenous studies in a way that will facilitate broader discussion between these often segregated disciplines.