Notes

how to write while colonised
Alice Te Punga Somerville.
77 pages.
New Zealand author and poet. Contents: Reo. Kupu rere kē -- Layers -- Rākau -- red-carded -- ielts -- burdens for this generation -- Anchor -- flight -- Invisible Ink. mad ave -- This is what it feels like -- serenity prayers -- fleet -- September 2008 -- a new generation of historians on flight NZ449 -- Waitangi Day 2019 -- relative -- La Mujer -- Permeable -- worst place to be a pilot -- room -- Mahi. Too -- time to write -- Firsts -- debris -- Te Kawa a Māui farewell -- from aotearoa to turtle island -- the radical act of sleeping -- Fryer Library, UQ -- An Indigenous scholar's request to other scholars -- Swipe left -- kia tūpato -- tau(gh)t -- Missing -- a symposium, sixteenth-century style -- Titaua's ship -- Aroha. first draft of a waiata tangi -- traffic -- te ariki -- Sphere -- he waiata tangi, he waiata aroha -- An Indigenous woman scholar's prayer.
Summary: In wit and anger, sadness and aroha, author reflects on 'how to write while colonised' - how to write in English as a Maori writer; how to trace links between Aotearoa and wider Pacific, Indigenous and colonial worlds; how to be the only Maori person in a workplace; and how - and why - to do the mahi anyway. I wanted to pick up baby, and I wanted to pick a fight: The eternal Waitangi Day dilemma.