Sit back and discover the hottest new books, from a slice of island escapism to the latest offering from the prodigiously talented Laurence Fearnley. Elsewhere, historian Brent Coutts recounts 1972, a monumental year for Auckland Gay Liberation and "the beginning of an assertion of legitimacy and inclusion". Happy reading.
Canvas books wrap: So far for now by Fiona Kidman, Mohamed Hassan, and more
9 mins to read
Auckland Gay Liberation, Albert Park, 1972.
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Kidman emerges life-size from her words: spirited, adventurous, loud and constant in her demands for justice, quietly determined in her quest for truth, honest in her admission of vulnerability and of pain. The book's first section, "Mine Alone", brings into focus the locations and human histories that have shaped Kidman's own identity. "About Grandparents" touches on the troubling question of home that confronts those New Zealanders, like Kidman, whose European ancestors, displaced by oppression and famine, crossed the world in hope or desperation to start new lives in New Zealand. But of course, as Kidman puts it, "One displacement sets the scene for another."
Other pieces in the section recall Kidman's search for the first house of her infancy, found in Hāwera, the tragicomic trials and joys of two years during which her parents attempted to farm in Waipū, and the complex relationship that she formed with that place which, along with a house on a hillside in Hataitai, she also calls home.
"The Outsiders" brings together the stories of individuals to whom Kidman has felt some extraordinary degree of commitment. Research into the life and death of Albert Black, subject of This Mortal Boy, led her to the streets of Belfast, and less glamorously into "the swamps and pines" of Waikumete Cemetery; her unmitigated passion for Marguerite Duras carried her to Saigon and Hanoi, to the Mekong River and to Montparnasse — and another cemetery.
The "Going South" section includes At Pike River, an informative account of Kidman's own involvement in the battle to halt the sealing of the mine and to continue the process of investigation and accountability. She interrogates New Zealand's questionable record on women's reproductive rights in Playing with Fire, an essay in The Body's Sweet Ache. Kidman also explores life as a writer, and as a teacher of memoir writing, a participant in literary festivals, a writing fellow in Otago, even as an unproductive prisoner of Covid's great lockdown.
"This New Condition", the final section of essays, concludes instead with Kidman's invaluable reflection, On Widowhood, a frank and very personal exploration of the many challenges presented by this unwelcome and under-discussed phase of life. Heart-rending and humorous by turns, Kidman confronts such issues as repelling gold diggers, dining alone, removing the ring and, eventually, realising that there can still be perfect days. The ache of her loss never lessens but it appears, in these final pages, alleviated by a reflective calm, perhaps part of what the author describes as "one of the gifts of age — a softening round the edges, an acceptance of how things have gone".
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This gentle acceptance, however, is belied by the sustained energy and appetite for life and work that emanates from the writings of this collection. There is grace, certainly, in Kidman's reconciliation to the conditions in life she cannot change but in no sense has she surrendered to age. On the contrary, in So far for now, she has mastered it.
JUST OUT
Just as the season tips over into winter, prodigiously talented Kiwi writer Laurence Fearnley is back with a new novel, Winter Time (Penguin, $36). Set in the Mackenzie Basin, it centres on a man who has returned home to work through his brother's sudden death.
Escape the drizzly cold by dipping into Sarah McCoy's escapist novel Mustique Island (HarperCollins, $33). Imagine: It's the 1970s and divorced mum Willy May has just built a house across the island from Princess Margaret.
Already in production as a movie, The Guncle (Simon and Schuster, $38) is a comedic novel about a once-famous sitcom star who takes care of his niece and nephew following their mother's death. Think modern Auntie Mame set in Palm Springs.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Tara Moss: 'I wasn't really sure if I was disabled enough'
International model-turned-author and advocate Tara Moss talks to Craig Sisterson about untold stories, her passion for human rights, and the bravery of wartime women. Read the full story here.
50 YEARS AFTER GAY LIBERATION
by David Herkt
Exactly 50 years ago, in 1972, many Aucklanders were faced with something they had never knowingly confronted. For some it would be their worst fear. For others it would come as a great release.
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"It was a turning point," explains historian Brent Coutts, "and New Zealand as a whole would benefit from it."
A group, Auckland Gay Liberation, had just been formed. They promptly embarked on a series of events calculated to bring a group of people who had been erased from public light to visibility. Male homosexuality was then illegal in New Zealand and punishable by up to two years of imprisonment. Couples could not marry. Any social interaction was "underground".
For a landmark publication, 1972: A Year in Focus, Coutts has conducted interviews, written an extended essay, collected photographs and located many primary documents in order to outline 12 months that changed the sexual outlook of New Zealand life.
"I realised that there may be very little commemoration of this historical occasion and felt it important to mark it," he says. "I had been frustrated by the very simplistic understanding of the events of 1972 and wanted to help correct that."
To recover the past involves not only revealing the things that happened, but also the thoughts behind events. The 60s were the era of the counterculture and there was a new belief that fundamental change could happen. The 70s saw those ideas travel globally.
"I came across the now almost forgotten idea of holding a 'consciousness-raising happening' to encourage visibility and a change in opinion," Coutts explains, "and the protest tactic of a 'zap', where you turn up unannounced to make your demands. These terms from the 1970s have fallen by the wayside and perhaps should be revived."
The Gay Liberation "zap" at the at the Auckland Registry of Birth, Deaths, and Marriages in April 1972, for example, involved a male couple arriving at the main desk in an attempt to marry. A "Gay Day Happening" in Albert Park had the Gay Liberation street-theatre cell re-enacting incidents of police harassment of gay men.
Coutts also reconfigures many stories – and reveals many people whose significant achievements have been overlooked. The accepted version says the Auckland Gay Liberation was the result of Ngahuia Volkerling (now Te Awekotuku) being refused a visa to travel to the United States to study because one component of her academic visit was to investigate "gay power".
While Te Awekotuku certainly provided a catalyst, Coutts reveals that after a bare three months of involvement, she decided to pull back from Gay Liberation and focus instead on Māori activism and her academic studies.
"While she was a force of energy," Coutts writes, "it was the group of individuals that joined her who initiated and drove the movement for change."
People like Malcolm McAllister, Dick Morrison, Janet Roth, Caterina De Nave and Sharon Alston have been all but erased from the historic record, yet they were the people who would continue as the mainstay of the group for the next few years. In 1972, they would join anti-Vietnam War protests, hold regular monthly meetings, publish the Gay Lib News, and hold a Christmas Party, amid other actions.
Eventually the group would petition Parliament, face up to many television and radio interviews, and even speak at more liberal schools. Other Gay Liberation chapters were formed in Wellington and Christchurch.
It was the thought that counted, not an individual voice, no matter how strident.
There were many defining debates in that first year. Some feel very familiar in an era where the concepts of "cisgender" and an ever-lengthening string of acronyms have become part of social discussion.
"One of the things I found interesting was a heated debate over what name to call the community," Coutts comments. "Should they stick with the name 'homosexual', which many rejected as a term that medicalised their sexuality and identity as an illness. Many advocated for the term 'homophile'. Eventually, the term 'gay' won out as a name used in 1972 for both men and women."
The idea was, Coutts suggests, that Gay Liberation would achieve liberation for individuals and then work to make wider social changes. It was a sexual revolution from the singular to the social.
"It was the inauguration of a new era of political visibility and assertiveness – and the beginning of an assertion of legitimacy and inclusion. In this respect, it's a turning point in our history," he says. "The wider New Zealand community eventually began to accept the new Gay Liberation ideology as a normal way of thinking."
1972: A Year in Focus is designed by artist George Hajian and bound in a multi-sectional format, with each of the five parts on different-sized and different-coloured paper. There are photographs and graphics from the era. To read and use the publication is like plunging into the archive, with its various strands.
"The idea was to try to visually represent the different voices in the community in 1972. There is very little visual record of events and the photographs by John Miller and Max Oettli are a taonga that we felt were important to include in the book."
While being very readable, fascinatingly explorable, and a work of publishing art, Coutts has also provided the ultimate resource in a year when the teaching of New Zealand history enters a new phase of the refreshed school curriculum.
1972: A Year in Focus by Brent Coutts (Queer Art Narratives, $30) has already sold out its first printing, however, copies were donated to 40 public libraries throughout New Zealand. Another edition is planned.
