7/31/2019 deloughrey Review of Tu

1/4

7/31/2019 deloughrey Review of Tu

2/4

464 the contemporary pacific 18:2 (2006)

related to a narcissism that indexes awidespread socio-cultural malaise(177).

The above sketch cannot do justiceto the complexities of Keowns argu-ments, but hopefully it raises ques-tions about methodology that comeup when assessing postcolonialPacific writing and PostcolonialPacific Writing. While Keown simplytouches on such questions by suggest-ing that not being open to theorizingfrom the outside in threatenstheoretical insularity, her critical

position is clearly embodied in a prac-tice described as itself an examinationof how postcolonial theories may bedeployed productively . . . withoutcompromising the necessary attendantfocus upon local social-economic andcultural factors (195). Likewise,though not directly articulated, herviews on culture and politics areregistered in the course of her read-ing, particularly in her representationsof Mori approaches to nation. Ihad reservations, in places where thepsychoanalytic language gets thick,about the appropriateness or criticalpayoff of providing clinical diagnosesfor the conditions of her indigenoussubjects: the universalization of theunconscious seems an unstableapproach to cross-cultural study.Nevertheless, I found Keowns study

impressively grounded in postcolonialnew literatures; wide-ranging in itsreferences to New Zealand secondaryscholarship (Keown is Pkeh) whilesteeped in postcolonial theory; andresponsive to indigenous socio-poetics, history, and narrative modes(particularly Mori). Given that thetexts she selects are among thosemost readily available from US and

New Zealand publishers, this canon-solidifying bookwith its extensivebibliographyseems primed to be auseful supplement to Pacific literaturesyllabi. In these senses, PostcolonialPacific Writingmakes a significantcontribution to a potentially widerconversation about Pacific literaturesthat has, most notably among Pacificwriters and scholars themselves,remained understandably wary abouthow and on what terms to proceed.

paul lyons

University of Hawaii, Mnoa

* * *

Tu: A Novel, by Patricia Grace.Honolulu: University of HawaiiPress, 2004. isbn 0-8248-2927-1;287 pages, authors notes. us$16.00.

A decade ago there were few Morinovels that took place outside ofAotearoa New Zealand, yet recentyears have witnessed a whole newgeographical imagination in theliterature. Witi Ihimaeras The UnclesStory (2000), for instance, details theexperience of Mori in the VietnamWar, connecting diverse landscapesand histories across the Pacificthrough the literary frame of thewartime diary, particularly as it is cir-culated and interpreted by family and

ultimately the audience of the novel.Patricia Graces novel Tu deepens thehistorical frame by inscribing thelegacy of Mori involvement in bothworld wars. This literary turn to thetransnational geographies of war maysay much about our current historicalmoment of global militarization. Yetthese novels cannot be reduced tocontemporary political events, as

7/31/2019 deloughrey Review of Tu

3/4

book and media reviews 465

relevant as they may be. While thereare obvious overlaps between ourcurrent-day militarism and the waysin which the colonial subjects of theEuropean empires were utilized inthe Second World War, the frame ofPatricia Graces sixth novel suggests afamily archeology as well as a culturalexcavation of Mori participation innational and international politics.Like Ihimaeras novel, the narrativeofTu is drawn from state archives,military reports, diaries, and familyhistory. In its skillful telling, the

novel weaves together letters, journalentries, and omniscient narration. Thelayering of multiple narrative genreshere is a testimony to the complexityof the wartime subject as well as toits ultimate irrecoverability. Its defthandling of these materials and itsinvocation of such broad culturallandscapes earned the novel the DeutzMedal for Fiction as well as a Mon-tana Book Award.

The name of the novels protago-nist, Tu, is not only a reference to thegod of warfare (Tumatauenga) butalso reflects the long legacy of Moriparticipation in both world wars; ourmid-twentieth century protagonist isnamed after the 28 (Mori) Battalionthat preceded him. As Te Hokowhitu-a-Tu, he is ancestrally linked to theMany Fighting Men of Tumatauenga

(35), highlighting a continuity ofmasculine warriors as well as a cycli-cal pattern of sacrifice and renewal.Connecting both Mori and Christiancosmologies, as she has in earliernovels like Potiki (1986), Gracedescribes her protagonists secondname as Bernard, the patron saintof travelers and mountain climbers(35). In a space/time collapse between

Aotearoa and the European Alps,the protagonist Tu imagines himselfsomewhat destined to be stationed inthe mountains of Italy with the MoriBattalion. His two elder brothers,Rangi and Pita, whose names andsacrificial actions reiterate the Moriand Christian symbology, are deeplydistraught when their underagebrother appears at the warfront. Thisforegrounds a fundamental tensionbetween home and away that isreflected in narrative terms on a morelocal scale in their familys migration,

over the previous decade, from a ruralcommunity to urban Wellington. Theconnection between national andinternational migration is neatlywoven together, reiterating Gracesearlier concern in Cousins (1992), forinstance, to locate the historical andgenealogical nexus of Mori culturein the rural sphere and connect this toa politicized urban space that makesthe unification of diverse iwi (tribes)possible. In Tu, the shift from therural to urban raises similar issues interms of the modernization of NewZealand culture through global war,particularly how the expansion ofwomens waged labor reconfiguresgender relations between husband andwife as well as brother and sister. (Forinstance, when they first migrate toWellington, Pita disapproves of his

sisters entering the industrial laborforce.) Like the city, the warfront andthe Mori Battalion in particular pro-vide the space in which connectionsmay be established between men ofdiverse iwi, but Grace seems to ques-tion the long-term implications of aunity forged through empire, violence,and loss. For example, Tus maritimevoyage around the world to the war-

7/31/2019 deloughrey Review of Tu

4/4

466 the contemporary pacific 18:2 (2006)

front and his initial training period inNorth Africa are not shown to facili-tate political or personal allegiancesbetween Mori and other racializedsubjects of the European empires. InTus narrative of the war in Italy, heestablishes some general connectionsto local Italians and maintains closeallegiances to other soldiers of theMori Battalion, but ultimately thesecharacters remain sketchy. When hisfriends are killed in war (as most ofthem are, in the disastrous attempt toreclaim Monte Cassino from the Ger-

mans), their anecdotal presence in thenovel does little to impart a full senseof loss of each life. This is whereGraces narrative restraint is the mosthoned, actively resisting the readersdesire to uncover some meaning fromdevastating loss, violence, and death.Tu learns of many of their deathsthrough hearsay, and others he wit-nesses, but most seem to enter thenovel as quickly as they are murderedin war. Significantly more narrativescaffolding is provided for the loss ofhis elder brothers, but Tus pursuit ofthe war and his return, at twentyyears old, an aged and devastatedman does little to convince the readerof the reward for his tremendoussacrifices.

This raises one of the central andmost disturbing concerns of the novel

how to reassemble, through narra-tive form, those historic relationshipsand familial patterns that were createdout of an initial sense of adventureand honor and yet became a familylegacy of violence, miscommunica-tion, silence, and erasure. Tus fatherhad returned deeply damaged andshell-shocked from the First WorldWar, and, replicating a terrible spiral,

his sons pursue a similar pattern.While the novel foregrounds the waysin which whanau (family) is integralto ensuring the survival of theseyoung men, their wives and childrenin particular pay a tremendous pricein reassembling the fragments afterwar. Perhaps these legacies for thefuture represent the most importantdifference between one generationswar and the next, and they signalsome hope for the process of healingand recovery. Tus diaries and lettersbegin to uncover these family secrets

and are directed to his brothers twochildren; although their Pkehmother is estranged from the family,signaling yet another alienation, thechildrens attempt to reassemble arelationship with their reclusive unclesuggests a regenerating movement inthe spiral. Grace explains that thisbook was inspired by her ownattempts to fill in the gaps left by herfathers experience in the 28 (Mori)Battalion. The interstices of his war-time journal thus provide the spacefor the creative author to weave animaginative fabric that attests to thebravery and, after sixty years, theunimaginable sacrifice.

elizabeth deloughrey

Cornell University

* * *

Voice Carried My Family, by RobertSullivan. Auckland: Auckland Univer-sity Press, 2005. isbn 1-86940-337-1;66 pages, notes. Paper, nz$21.99.

The iridescent mother-of-pearl coverof Robert Sullivans fifth poetry col-lection, Voice Carried My Family,mirrors its ephemeral motifs of move-