{"id":4477,"date":"2010-01-11T19:19:27","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T19:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=4477"},"modified":"2016-06-03T15:13:51","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:13:51","slug":"being-maori-chinese-mixed-identities-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=4477","title":{"rendered":"Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities (Book Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities (Book Review)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies<\/a>
\nUniversity of Otago, New Zealand
\nVolume 5, Number 2 (2008)
\npages 180-182<\/p>\n

Kate Bagnall<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities<\/a>, <\/em>Manying Ip, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2008,\u00a0255pp. ISBN 978-1-86940-399-7<\/strong><\/p>\n

Manying Ip<\/a> makes it clear from the outset that Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities<\/em> is a very personal book. It begins with an explanation of her own inspiration for the project \u2013 the emergence of tantalising snippets about M\u0101ori-Chinese families that kept popping up in her wider research on New Zealand Chinese \u2013 and her own process of locating subjects and conducting interviews. Ip tells of being warned by a \u2018well-meaning elder\u2019 from Te W\u0101nangao-Raukawa about the difficulties she would encounter in her project, due to the sensitivity of the subject matter and the reticence that M\u0101ori-Chinese as a group would have towards sharing in-depth information with her. \u2018Are you sure you wish to pursue this study on M\u0101ori-Chinese relations? I don\u2019t think people will tell you much\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n

The publication of Being M\u0101ori-Chinese<\/em> is, then, an acknowledgement of Ip\u2019s reputation as a researcher and community advocate. It is only through mutual trust that she has been given access to the personal stories of the seven M\u0101ori-Chinese families whose experiences make up the heart of the book.\u00a0 Each chapter focuses on a particular family and presents an intimate journey into the family culture and individual identities of family members. The book is further testament to the courage and generosity of her subjects, who shared memories and thoughts on many aspects of their lives. Their generosity is particularly moving because, as Ip states, \u2018those memories involve a struggle against social discrimination and, in many cases, family disapproval\u2019…<\/p>\n

…Family stories, such as those told in Being M\u0101ori-Chinese<\/em>, are at the core of the growing body of Australasian scholarship that explores mixed race lives, families and communities. Such stories counter the assumptions of previous generations that interracial encounters were either unthinkable due to race prejudice or occurred under unsavoury conditions that were detrimental to one or both parties.<\/strong> Ip is to be commended for encouraging the M\u0101ori-Chinese families included in the book to share their experiences, and also for carefully structuring each chapter so that her voice takes a secondary place to those of family members themselves. As she notes in her Introduction, the book explores lives that \u2018have been largely overlooked in the formal historical and sociological discourse of New Zealand\u2019. This book is an important step in inserting M\u0101ori-Chinese into the story of New Zealand\u2019s past, present and future…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities (Book Review) Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies University of Otago, New Zealand Volume 5, Number 2 (2008) pages 180-182 Kate Bagnall Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities, Manying Ip, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2008,\u00a0255pp. ISBN 978-1-86940-399-7 Manying Ip makes it clear from the outset that Being M\u0101ori-Chinese: Mixed Identities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,16,5,8,4405,394],"tags":[221,1772,1773,1774,1000,1775],"class_list":["post-4477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-asia","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-oceania","category-socialscience","tag-china","tag-kate-bagnall","tag-manying-ip","tag-maori","tag-new-zealand","tag-sites-a-journal-of-social-anthropology-and-cultural-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47268,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions\/47268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}