This review was first published in the print edition of Landfall 244
Emma Gattey
Kārearea by Māmari Stephens (Bridget Williams Books, 2021), 146pp, $14.99; Fragments from a Contested Past: Remembrance, denial and New Zealand history by Joanna Kidman, Vincent O’Malley, Liana MacDonald, Tom Roa and Keziah Wallis (Bridget Williams Books, 2022), 184pp, $14.99
One of Aotearoa’s swiftest birds of prey, the kārearea (New Zealand falcon or sparrowhawk), is beautiful, lethal and a threatened species. Māmari Stephens (Te Rarawa) named her blog after this bird because ‘the kārearea’s flight above has a comforting distance from the ground’, a distance she wished to gain through publishing her opinions anonymously. Thankfully, this initial anonymity gave way to self-identification. Her writing in Kārearea exemplifies the whakataukī, ‘Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini’ (‘My success is not mine alone, but is the strength of many’). As a legal scholar, writer, Anglican priest and wahine Māori, Stephens is incredibly aware of her social reproductive, intellectual and emotional debts to her community. This is a humble book. Through writing these pieces, Stephens realises the extent to which her ‘writing needs the people and experiences I come from, if my words are to make any sense at all’. [Read more…]