As Real as the Spice Girls: Representing Identity in Twenty-first Century New Zealand Literature

Abstract

The concept of authenticity has long been inextricable from identity in Aotearoa New Zealand, ever since Allen Curnow famously urged midtwentieth century artists to focus on the local and the specific in order to create an island nation clearly differentiated from Britain. Recent writers, however, particularly in works that have appeared since the turn of the century, are increasingly questioning just what 'authenticity' means in relation to identity. There is a marked contrast between the part-Maori, part-Pakeha protagonist in Keri Hulmes' 1984 novel the bone people, who explains that 'by blood, flesh, and inheritance, I am but an eighth Maori, by heart, spirit, and inclination, I feel all Maori', and the Fijian New Zealander in Toa Fraser's 1999 play No. 2, who insists that her Nanna is 'about as real Fijian as the Spice Girls'. Writers such as Fraser, Paula Morris and Eleanor Cattan represent identity not as inherent or authentic but as constructed and performed.

Reading (in) the Antipodes: New Zealand and Pacific Literatures in Spanish Translation

“…14 This is in line with more traditional "feminist, generic, biographical and social or historical" 15 approaches which continue to mediate the marketing of her work for a non-academic readership. 16 Journal of New Zealand Studies NS21 (2015), [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] An example of this emphasis on the more turbulent aspects of Mansfield's life is seen in the author's profile offered by Alba, which released independent editions of At the Bay (En la bahía) and In a German Pension (En un balenario alemán) 17 The interest in the biographical is also evident in the diverse translations and re-editions of Mansfield's letters and diaries appearing from the late seventies, 19 as well as the preference for the translation of biographies of Mansfield written by Claire Tomalin-Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1987) 20 -or Pietro Citati 21 -translated from the French and described by Kimber as "hagiographical in tone and content"- 22 over more academic accounts of her life which are not yet available in Spanish.…”

“…42 At the same time, the translations of these works into Spanish seem to respond more to a general interest for indigenous literatures worldwide than to a specific interest in Maori writing or culture in particular. This may explain why there has been Journal of New Zealand Studies NS21 (2015), [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] no consistent attempt to expand the number of translations by other Maori authors, and why other works by Duff, Ihimaera and Grace remain unknown to Spanish readers.…”

“…Erin Mercer discusses the works of writers like Paula Morris or Lloyd Jones, who have set their novels outside New Zealand, or authors like Eleanor Catton or Toa Fraser, who have chosen to write about New Zealand identity in a performative rather than essentialist mode, to account for the key markers of contemporary New Zealand identity: "The increasingly diverse composition of New Zealand society, a growing sense of independence from the colonial past and the quest for advantage in the globalized market." 61 Likewise, writing about the international reception of Janet Frame's The Carpanthians (1988) and Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck (1999), Janet Wilson argues that the national paradigm which seemed to guide the formative years of New Zealand literature in the 1930s and 1940s has given way to new literary articulations which reflect the "reconfigured matrix of the global and the local." 62 Wilson reads both novels as revealing "the dilution of national concerns and new emphasis on the local which globalization enforces."…”

“…As discussed below, the translation of particular works may occasionally reflect their specific literary qualities or the impact in their local publication context, but quite often responds to what Ponzanesi defines as "the Economy of prestige," where prestige derives not only from "old Western paradigms of literariness and craftsmanship but also … [from] new, more evasive cultural concepts ranging from cosmopolitanism to authenticity and ethnic-chic," 7 as determined by specific commercial or social trends, or non-literary aspects. The title of my article thus makes reference to the set of translated works through which Spanish people read their literary Antipodes while referring at the same time to the ways in which this specific Journal of New Zealand Studies NS21 (2015), [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] selection of works reveals a process of reading in New Zealand's Antipodes that is clearly determined by global publishing trends rather than by the specificities of the Spanish market or the taste of Spanish readers.…”

Contemporary Pasifika Poetry in Aotearoa New Zealand: An interview with Selina Tusitala Marsh

“…In her discussion of the international impact of the works of Janet Frame and Elizabeth Knox, for instance, Janet Wilson (2004) talks about this writing as evidence that local or provincial elements "can be recontextualized and re-inflected through exposure in the international market place" (121), which in turn demonstrates New Zealand's "national interests [as] increasingly capable of being identified with global interests" (131). Similarly, Erin Mercer (2010) praises the performative character of work by writers like Eleanor Catton, Lloyd Jones or Paula Morris as evidence of their ability to leave behind former discussions of the colonial while engaging in a "quest for advantage in the globalized market" (102). Paula Morris (2015) has advocated demythologizing "New Zealand literature" as a closed entity that needs to be irremediably tied to place and rejects the idea that "a local focus is the writer's obligation" (71).…”