Come On Shore And We Will Kill You And Eat You All - Hardcover

Christina Thompson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747582521 ISBN 13: 9780747582526

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and Maoris, told partly as a history of the complex and violent period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's unlikely marriage to a Maori man. Beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and Cook's circumnavigation of 1770, Thompson explores the legacy of cultural displacement over centuries: the fascination, the friction and the bloody encounters that have left indelible scars on the consciousness of New Zealand. In turn, she finds the clash of cultures winds its way into her own life as she falls in love with a Maori known as 'Seven'. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii and from tribal New Zealand to a settled home in New England, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. A blend of history, memoir,

About this title

About the Author

Christina Thompson was born in Switzerland in 1959 and grew up outside Boston. She attended Dartmouth College and in 1984 she was awarded a fellowship for graduate study in Australia. She received her PhD from the University of Melbourne, held postdoctoral appointments at the East West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the University of Queensland, and in 1994 was appointed editor of the Australian literary journal, Meanjin. In 1998 she returned to the US and in 2000 assumed the editorship of Harvard Review. Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications including the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Boston Globe, the American Scholar and the Contemporary Pacific. She lives near Boston with her husband and three sons.

Review

'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 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down 'A charming blend of travel writing, cultural history, anthropology and memoir, this intriguing book honours the nineteenth-century explorers' narratives that are its inspiration' Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal 'Her prose never disappoints' Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0747582521
• ISBN 13: 9780747582526
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288