{"id":540,"date":"2010-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T23:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=540"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:58:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:58:28","slug":"once-upon-a-time-in-aotearoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/07\/17\/once-upon-a-time-in-aotearoa\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Upon A Time In Aotearoa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Tina Makarete<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Huia<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, July 17th 2010<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Tina Makereti has already proven her versatility as a writer, last year winning both the non-fiction section of the Royal Society\u2019s Manhire Prize for creative science writing and the English language category of the Pikihuia awards for M\u0101ori writers.\u00a0 Her newly-published short story collection <em>Once Upon A Time In Aotearoa<\/em> proves that this success is well deserved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The thirteen stories range from a relatively conventional description of the creation of Hine (albeit one in which T\u0101ne is much more man than god) to the tale of a woman who is convinced her boyfriend is an alien who has taken possession of her soul.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Although the settings and characters are unmistakably of this country, they are suffused with a magic realism that lends the stories a mythic quality.\u00a0 Thus it is not surprising to find that \u2018Topknot\u2019, which begins as a seemingly straightforward depiction of a teenage girl hiding her pregnancy from friends and family unfolds into a contemporary retelling of the birth of M\u0101ui.\u00a0 Nor in \u2018Shapeshifter\u2019 is it surprising to hear Pania, trapped within the statue erected in her honour, passing comment on her appropriation and commodification in the name of tourism \u2013 \u201c<em>Jeez, you\u2019d think they\u2019d have a bit more class.\u00a0 I must\u2019ve been felt up by half the country.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In the same way that the gods and ancestors are ever present in te ao M\u0101ori, Makereti\u2019s New Zealand is one watched over by the mountains and the moon, and the old ways coexist with the new. It is a country where gods and goddesses walk among us, love hope and redemption are powerful forces, and where \u201cthere are more than two kinds of people in the world after all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/while-gods-walk-among-us-aotearoa-other-lives-are-not-so-blessed\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/while-gods-walk-among-us-aotearoa-other-lives-are-not-so-blessed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tina Makarete<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review July 17th 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[115,370,500,18,375,407,120],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-115","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-short-story","tag-speculative-sci-fi","tag-tina-makarete"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}