Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All A New Zealand Story

"A multilayered, highly informative and insightful book that blends memoir, historical and travel narrative...vivid and meticulously researched."--San Francisco ChronicleIn this involving, compassionate memoir, Christina Thompson tells the story of her romance and eventual marriage to a Maori man, interspersing it with a narrative history of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand. Christina Thompsonis the editor ofHarvard Review. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including the American Scholar, theJournal of Pacific History, and Australian Literary Studies, and in the 1999, 2000, and 2006 editions ofBest Australian Essays. She lives near Boston with her family. ANew York TimesEditor's Choice Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You Allis 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 revelatory 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. Gracefully transporting readers back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal New Zealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own,Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You Allbrings wildly diverse characters and settings to life. 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."[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."--The New York Times Book Review "A multilayered, highly informative and insightful book that blends memoir, historical and travel narrative . . . [Thompson writes with] a Chekhovian clarity and restraint that in places possesses a poetic lucidity."--San Francisco Chronicle "Charming, insightful, honest, balanced, the book offers a unique look at the pressures of marriage across cultural, racial, and geographical boundaries. Vivid, fascinating reading."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "A thing of beauty."--Tampa Tribune "A highly unusual blend of personal memoir, travel writing and anthropology . . . one's understanding is rocked, lifted and pushed about, as undercurrents collide."--Lynne Truss,Sunday Times(UK) "Brilliant and bracing . . . nuanced and sophisticated . . . a superb book, full of gravity and power and truth."--<

Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including American Scholar, the Journal of Pacific History, Australian Literary Studies, and in the 1999, 2000, and 2006 editions of Best Australian Essays. She lives near Boston with her family.