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Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story | 
| Author: Christina Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $12.25
You Save: $12.74 (51%)
New (29) Used (11) from $8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 34905
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 1596911263
Dewey Decimal Number: 993.01
EAN: 9781596911260
ASIN: 1596911263
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: No marks in text. US hardcover edition. Ships from well-known east coast bookshop, founded 1991.
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Product Description
An extraordinary love story between a Maori man and an American woman, that inspires a graceful, revelatory search for understanding about the centuries-old collision of two wildly different cultures.
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is 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 extraordinary 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. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal NewZealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lost in Translation September 26, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Ms. Thompson makes a good point in her book, saying that she always got the feeling that `she never quite got what was going on in NZ.' Unfortunately she went on to write this book anyway, and that is regrettable.
There are two parts to this book, history and memoir. The history is narrow and it tends to focus on sensational (exotic?) aspects that might appeal to an American audience, like shrunken heads and tattooed faces. For anyone interested in a broader account of NZ history, Michael King's `The Penguin History or New Zealand' is the best place to start. The memoir aspect should be a little more interesting for US readers - after all, it's unusual for someone from Boston to marry someone from NZ, let alone a Maori.
Not content to frame NZ concepts in American language for her audience, Ms Thompson told her story of NZ through US cultural lenses. This caused her to interpret things incorrectly. Two examples are; Firstly, when she first arrived in NZ she was looking for signs of where Maori might live - presumably so she could visit them and experience their culture (as if they were separate from the rest of the population like native Americans?) The concept of `finding where Maori live' is as absurd as visiting a reservation or plantation to see native Americans or blacks. If she wanted to find Maori, driving into the first suburb she spotted would have been the best place to start.
Second, her `fury' that her husband was `directed' into trade school (rather than university) because he was Maori is ridiculous. Trade schools, apprenticeships and polytechs (community colleges) offer training for highly valued and well paid jobs in NZ. Skilled trades people are important to the economy and ALL school children are exposed to those options in high school. Due to geographic isolation, those jobs must come from within NZ's population - there is no pool of cheap labor over the border from which to draw. Unlike America, most NZ families do not expect, or even hope, that their children will go to university (even in 2008).
The book also includes observations that are wrong, annoying or generalized. Ms Thompson implies that NZ'ers believe their racial integration is evidence that there is no racism in NZ. That is incorrect. Of course racism exists in NZ, as it does in any society with more than one ethnic population. But integration has resulted in good race relations, which is an important achievement (particularly when you compare it to neighboring Australia or race relations around the world). Her constant use of the words Maori, Pakeha and Half-Caste is annoying. Those terms are not used by NZ'ers to describe each other in 2008 and may even be considered offensive. NZ is a multi-cultural melting pot and those terms are no longer relevant. Her description of the coffee that `Seven's' family drinks is generalized to the entire country implying a lack of sophistication. NZ is an espresso mecca. I focus on it because when I came to the US I drove my husband mad trying to find a decent cappuccino.
From my perspective the book missed all the wonderful subtlety and complexity of NZ. Ms. Thompson should have stuck closer to home in her choice of topic. There are two things that make me sad about this book 1) American's who might be thinking of visiting NZ will read it and think its an accurate portrayal, and 2) that it might be published in NZ. While I am not generally in favor of book-banning, I might make an exception here : )
 An unusual memoir September 18, 2008
In this book we read an unusual life story, starting with a student's life-changing encounter on a stopover New Zealand, and continuing with her subsequent family life in Australia, Hawaii, and her native New England. At the same time we follow and ponder her developing ideas about the tsunami-like effect of Europeans on Maori civilization, as reflected in individual lives, historical and current. Almost all of this was new to me and I found the book completely engaging.
 Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story August 16, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I thought the author became a bit lost between the history of the Maori people and her own biography. At times I almost felt that she married her Maori husband as a research project and then failed to tell the reader about it. However, I did learn a great deal of the history of New Zealand.
History meets personal --- and it works August 11, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I picked up this book at my local bookstore and could not put it down. Thompson's book mixes memoir with historic research to create a very accessible and interesting book. She smoothly combines her research on the literature of colonial-Maori contact with her own story of how she met and married her Maori husband. One of the best books on the contacts between very different cultures that I have read in a long time. And it will make you want to go to New Zealand too.
 A FASCINATING READ August 6, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
As an American transplant to New Zealand, I have to say that I found Christina Thompson's book an absolutely fascinating read. And as the author of two books on New Zealand myself (the second one a work-in-progress), I have to say that her volume has add immeasurably to my effort to understand, not only the historic Maori, but Maori today. I can also appreciate her cross cultural experience via marriage, being that my wife was born and raised in France. If Pakeha--Europeans--have historically viewed Maori with some ambiguity, I can testify to the fact that my French in-laws view me in a similar fashion. To put it politely they see me as a creature only a generation off the frontier that doesn't even know how to use a knife and fork properly--the French version of a savage, one might say. Ms. Thompson's Maori in-laws, on the other hand, impress me as being my idea of what in-laws should be. (I hope my mother-in-law doesn't read this.)
I have only one complaint about this book, and that is that I found the lack of signposts disorienting. That is to say that the reader has no way of knowing when Ms. Thompson's journey began. Was it in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s? Except for that omission, I would have to give this book five stars.
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