Title: Attitudes to the Maori in Some Pakeha Fiction

Author: Bill Pearson

In: Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays

Publication details: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Paul Millar

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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None of the serious writers of the period between Grace and the depression wrote of the Maori as he was living at the time. In the collection New Zealand Short Stories (1930), in spite of the editor's handsome mention of 'the delightful Maori race', his assurance that 'many stories' in the book are about Maoris and his hope that in time Pakeha absorption of the Maori would give New Zealanders both 'a slight golden tinge' and 'a love of high poetic imagery' to offset their oppressive practicality, there are in fact only five stories of Maoris, and only one of them of contemporary Maoris, and that one is hostile.¹⁸