Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
The book is an intriguing combination of memoir and history, ranging from Polynesia to New England and back again.Thompson is an academic on a fellowship in Melbourne, Australia. On vacation in New Zealand she meets a Maori man named Seven. They fall in love and start a family. She examines the history of NZ and how European exploration affected Maoris. There's a lot in the book about how her culture and her husband's culture clashed; she examines and tries to pick apart what's cultural and what's class-based.
The title is supposedly what Maoris said to Captain Cook and his crew when they sailed into what is now known as Murderer's Bay in 1642. One of the most interesting themes in the book is how that phrase really should have been translated, and how both sides completely misconstrued the other side's actions.
