Books : Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 993.01
EAN: 9781596911260
ISBN: 1596911263
Label: Bloomsbury USA
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Sales Rank: 31952
Studio: Bloomsbury USA
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
An extraordinary love story between a Maori man and an American woman, that inspires a graceful, revelatory search for understanding about the centuries-old collision of two wildly different cultures.
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson’s marriage to a Maori man. As an American graduate student studying literature in Australia, Thompson traveled on vacation to New Zealand, where she met a Maori known as “Seven.” Their relationship was one of opposites: he was a tradesman, she an intellectual; he came from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middle-class privilege; he was a “native,” she descended directly from “colonizers.” Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own.
In this extraordinary book, which grows out of decades of research, Thompson explores the meaning of cross-cultural contact and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and James Cook’s famous circumnavigations of 1769–79. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal NewZealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. Yet at its core, it is the story of two
people who, in making a life and a family together, bridge the gap between two worlds.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I found this book to be an interesting approach to writing a memoir. There are many parallels to current events in my life and have found inspiration from the author in how I can accept change and differences. Therefore I make a strong personal recommendation to read and enjoy this book.
Rating:  -
Ms. Thompson makes a good point in her book, saying that she always got the feeling that `she never quite got what was going on in NZ.' Unfortunately she went on to write this book anyway, and that is regrettable.
There are two parts to this book, history and memoir. The history is narrow and it tends to focus on sensational (exotic?) aspects that might appeal to an American audience, like shrunken heads and tattooed faces. For anyone interested in a broader account of NZ history, Michael King's `The Penguin History or New Zealand' is the best place to start. The memoir aspect should be a little more interesting for US readers - after all, it's unusual for someone from Boston to marry someone from NZ, let alone a Maori.
Not content to frame NZ concepts in American language for her audience, Ms Thompson told her story of NZ through US cultural lenses. This caused her to interpret things incorrectly. Two examples are; Firstly, when she first arrived in NZ she was looking for signs of where Maori might live - presumably so she could visit them and experience their culture (as if they were separate from the rest of the population like native Americans?) The concept of `finding where Maori live' is as absurd as visiting a reservation or plantation to see native Americans or blacks. If she wanted to find Maori, driving into the first suburb she spotted would have been the best place to start.
Second, her `fury' that her husband was ... Read More
Rating:  -
In this book we read an unusual life story, starting with a student's life-changing encounter on a stopover New Zealand, and continuing with her subsequent family life in Australia, Hawaii, and her native New England. At the same time we follow and ponder her developing ideas about the tsunami-like effect of Europeans on Maori civilization, as reflected in individual lives, historical and current. Almost all of this was new to me and I found the book completely engaging.
Rating:  -
I thought the author became a bit lost between the history of the Maori people and her own biography. At times I almost felt that she married her Maori husband as a research project and then failed to tell the reader about it. However, I did learn a great deal of the history of New Zealand.
Rating: -
I picked up this book at my local bookstore and could not put it down. Thompson's book mixes memoir with historic research to create a very accessible and interesting book. She smoothly combines her research on the literature of colonial-Maori contact with her own story of how she met and married her Maori husband. One of the best books on the contacts between very different cultures that I have read in a long time. And it will make you want to go to New Zealand too.
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