Editorial: Women making NZ's mark

Lorde. Photo/Dean Purcell

At school in fourth form (who cares what they call it these days) my English teacher posed a question.

"To an overseas audience, who would you say is the best-known New Zealander?"

We suggested perhaps Ed Hillary, Colin Meads, Peter Snell or Jack Lovelock. Others proposed Ernest Rutherford and David Lange.

Our teacher, who had lived and travelled extensively overseas, proceeded to tell us we were hopelessly wrong.

By way of explanation, he informed he was plagued with two questions as a Kiwi abroad: "Is New Zealand where Kiri Te Kanawa comes from?" And/or: "Is New Zealand where Katherine Mansfield comes from?"

He believed the two New Zealanders best known overseas were neither the sporting type, nor men.

A wailing soprano and a deeply troubled, inaccessible short fiction writer were the country's unwitting poster girls.

Strangely, I found it a liberating release from thinking champions of mauls and mountains were our best-known products. It was, and still is, crucial to realise there's an alternative source when we look to index our identity as New Zealanders.

Therein lies the most exciting thing about Lorde's double coup at the Grammys. And let's not forget the brooding crooner's triumph came just three months after writer Eleanor Catton scooped the Man Booker Prize in London.

My teacher was on to something; Catton now following Mansfield's example as a scribe of international standard, and Lorde a very different but equally talented superstar akin to a young Dame Kiri.

All four of these homegrown women are an inspiration to us Antipodean types who subscribe in varying degrees to the tyranny of distance.