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

Christina Thompson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1596911263 | ISBN-13: 978-1596911260 | Publication Date: July 22, 2008 | Edition: First Edition

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this unusual hybrid of history and memoir, Harvard Review editor Thompson examines the historical collisions between Westerners and Maoris through the lens of her marriage to a Maori man. As an American grad student in Australia, Thompson met her husband-to-be, known as Seven, while on vacation in New Zealand. She was petite, blonde and intellectual; he was large, dark and working-class. Yet within a short time, they had married and started a family. Their relationship, and her scholarship, took them back and forth across the Pacific, until they finally settled in her family's New England home outside Boston. Thompson's deep knowledge of the history of Europeans in the Pacific allows her to trace the misunderstandings and stereotypes that have marked perceptions of Polynesians up to the present day. A sensitive observer and polished stylist, Thompson is never dully tendentious or dogmatic. The narrative moves smoothly by way of well-told anecdotes both personal and historical. At times, Thompson covers so much territory—there's a stray chapter about her family's interactions with Native Americans in Minnesota—that it can feel like she's trying to do too much, yet her prose never disappoints. Seven, the man at the center of the book, remains pleasingly opaque, as if Thompson is saying that we can never know completely even those we love best. (July)
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Review

“[A] fine account. Her observations about the enduring effects of colonization [are] penetrating. She puts her vantage point of insider-outsider to good effect, tracing the genealogy of racial stereotypes and cutting through some of New Zealand's most cherished myths about itself.”   —New York Times Book Review

Thompson is never dully tendentious or dogmatic.  The narrative moves smoothly by way of well-told anecdotes both personal and historical.  Her prose never disappoints.”   —Publishers Weekly

“Perceptive, endearing look at the often fraught contacts between Maoris and Westerners. A candid examination of persistent, troubling issues of race and stereotype in the history of the two cultures’ encounters. Honest...forthright...well-wrought.”   —Kirkus

“Christina Thompson defines a contact encounter as “what we call it when two previously unacquainted groups meet for the very first time.” This unusual, unclassifiable, unfailingly interesting book is a contact encounter. Few readers will forget their first meeting with the author, with her Maori husband, and with the historical context that swirls around them. Thompson writes beautifully, and, even more remarkably, she surprises us on every page.” —Anne Fadiman, author of At Large and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

“A charming blend of travel writing, cultural history, anthropology, and memoir, this intriguing book honors the nineteenth-century explorers’ narratives that are its inspiration.” —Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596911263
• ISBN-13: 978-1596911260
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #916,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A FASCINATING READ, August 6, 2008

By 

Bruce M. Petty (New Plymouth, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story (Hardcover)

As an American transplant to New Zealand, I have to say that I found Christina Thompson's book an absolutely fascinating read. And as the author of two books on New Zealand myself (the second one a work-in-progress), I have to say that her volume has add immeasurably to my effort to understand, not only the historic Maori, but Maori today. I can also appreciate her cross cultural experience via marriage, being that my wife was born and raised in France. If Pakeha--Europeans--have historically viewed Maori with some ambiguity, I can testify to the fact that my French in-laws view me in a similar fashion. To put it politely they see me as a creature only a generation off the frontier that doesn't even know how to use a knife and fork properly--the French version of a savage, one might say. Ms. Thompson's Maori in-laws, on the other hand, impress me as being my idea of what in-laws should be. (I hope my mother-in-law doesn't read this.)
I have only one complaint about this book, and that is that I found the lack of signposts disorienting. That is to say that the reader has no way of knowing when Ms. Thompson's journey began. Was it in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s? Except for that omission, I would have to give this book five stars.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History meets personal --- and it works, August 11, 2008

By 

A. Lindenfeld "Reef Bay Knitter" (DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story (Hardcover)

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.

37 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lost in Translation, September 26, 2008

By 

Kylie Harper "Kiwi Girl in NYC" (NYC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story (Hardcover)

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 `directed' into trade school (rather than university) because he was Maori is ridiculous. Trade schools, apprenticeships and polytechs (community colleges) offer training for highly valued and well paid jobs in NZ. Skilled trades people are important to the economy and ALL school children are exposed to those options in high school. Due to geographic isolation, those jobs must come from within NZ's population - there is no pool of cheap labor over the border from which to draw. Unlike America, most NZ families do not expect, or even hope, that their children will go to university (even in 2008).

The book also includes observations that are wrong, annoying or generalized. Ms Thompson implies that NZ'ers believe their racial integration is evidence that there is no racism in NZ. That is incorrect. Of course racism exists in NZ, as it does in any society with more than one ethnic population. But integration has resulted in good race relations, which is an important achievement (particularly when you compare it to neighboring Australia or race relations around the world). Her constant use of the words Maori, Pakeha and Half-Caste is annoying. Those terms are not used by NZ'ers to describe each other in 2008 and may even be considered offensive. NZ is a multi-cultural melting pot and those terms are no longer relevant. Her description of the coffee that `Seven's' family drinks is generalized to the entire country implying a lack of sophistication. NZ is an espresso mecca. I focus on it because when I came to the US I drove my husband mad trying to find a decent cappuccino.

From my perspective the book missed all the wonderful subtlety and complexity of NZ. Ms. Thompson should have stuck closer to home in her choice of topic. There are two things that make me sad about this book 1) American's who might be thinking of visiting NZ will read it and think its an accurate portrayal, and 2) that it might be published in NZ. While I am not generally in favor of book-banning, I might make an exception here : )