Mutuwhenua - Softcover

Grace, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014025188X ISBN 13: 9780140251883

Publisher: Penguin New Zealand, 1995

Synopsis

Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps (1978), tells the story of the love and marriage of a young Maori woman and Pakeha man, the first time this had been done from the Maori perspective and by a Maori writer. It is focused on the effort of Ripeka/Linda to find identity as well as love, as increasingly she commits herself to her Maori being, family and name.

The novel ends with her passing the couple’s baby to her mother to be brought up in the extended family, so that the effort of what Grace has called the ‘very, very large leap’ of cross-cultural adjustment is asked of the husband, whereas ‘Most often it’s the Maori people who have to go across the gap’ (McRae interview). His love and moral quality are tested and judged in those terms: ‘I went to him confidently. He had not once failed to love.’

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Grace has won many awards for her work, including the New Zealand Fiction Award for Potiki in 1987, and being longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Patricia lives in Plimmerton near Wellington on the ancestral land of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin New Zealand
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014025188X
• ISBN 13: 9780140251883
• Binding: Paperback