Content note for graphic physical and emotional child abuse, violence, ableism
“A very simple story indeed.”
– Keri Hulme
The Bone People, published in February 1984, winning The Booker Prize the following year, depicts an asexual, aromantic main character, and has sold over 1.2 million copies. Written by Keri Hulme, it is in part based on her experiences as someone who self-identified as asexual and aromantic. The Bone People explores multiple layers of identity like queerness, mixed Maori heritage, autism, trauma, and a wide range of disability. The novel is remembered as a classic of New Zealand literature and deserves more recognition as a queer classic.
Classical queer literature bridges a vast array of identities. Some of the most well-known names in this genre include The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, The Portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, and Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, all of which have earned their place in queer history. The Bone People is unfortunately less recognized as a queer novel. Part of this comes from the discussion of queerness. It is discussed, but queerness is not named as clearly as in many more modern novels. That is largely because the language to discuss asexuality and aromanticism has evolved quickly in recent years. "Neuter," used in the novel, is still used but is certainly not the most popular verbiage today.
This has led to some people shrugging off the representation of asexuality and aromanticism in the novel. Part of the propaganda that disconnects queer people from our communities is denying our history. For those who consider asexual and aromantic identities modern inventions, it becomes necessary to ignore a novel published over forty years ago that clearly articulates those identities.
While queerness is a topic of discussion throughout the book, there is one passage that describes and explores asexuality and aromanticism in frank terms. In a book that is famed for how confusing it can be, the passage in question is crystal clear:
“I don't like kissing."
"I suppose it is a matter of taste."[...]"I wondered, did anyone ever," shrug, "you know, hurt you so you don't like kissing? love?"
"Nope."[...]
"I thought maybe someone had been bad to you in the past, and that was why you don't like people touching or holding you."
"Ah damn it to hell," she bangs the lamp down on the desk and the flame jumps wildly.
"I said no. I haven't been raped or jilted or abused in any fashion. There is nothing in my background to explain the way I am." She steadies her voice, taking the impatience out of it. "I'm the odd one out, the peculiarity in my family, because they are all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can remember, I've disliked close contact...charged contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels like the other person is draining something out of me. I know that's irrational, but that's the way I feel."
She touches the lamp and the flaring light stills.
"I spent a considerable amount of time when I was, o, adolescent, wondering why I was different, whether there were other people like me. Why, when everyone else was fascinated by their developing sexual nature, I couldn't give a damn. I've never been attracted to men. Or women. Or anything else. It's difficult to explain, and nobody has ever believed it when I have tried to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. I think I am a neuter.”
While neuter is different from what many including the author herself use to describe themselves today, this description clearly and concisely expresses an experience many asexual and/or aromantic people identify with. Even if the words asexual or aromantic had never been claimed by the author, this passage in particular is undeniably an example of queerness in fiction beyond the need for specific and modern words. It is vitally important when looking at queer history to focus on the experience over the ever-changing language; that is where connection is found.
As asexual and aromantic people continue to expand understandings of family, love, and connection, this book serves as an example and an exploration. It follows three people who are not related by blood, romance, or sex, but are nonetheless deeply entwined.
Even outside of the previous passage, The Bone People as a whole has queer sensibilities beyond the queer main character. To expand upon this, it will be necessary to go through the plot and themes explicitly. This is a good stopping point for those wanting to read the book without knowing anything more. For a deeper dive into the rest of the book, we'll continue in the following several parts.
This book has been read in many ways; as a cosigning of child abuse; as an appropriation of the Maori experience; and as a violent daydream. Its reception of the Booker Prize only a year after its publishing was highly controversial — two of the judges were publicly against it. After it received so much notoriety, C.K. Stead questioned Keri Hulme’s identity as a Maori person. There is no one right reading of this book, and many criticisms can be well supported by textual evidence.
That being said, there is an argument for a more optimistic reading of this complicated novel: one of queer and Maori exploration of family and restorative justice. With the characteristic complications of gothic literature, it can be compared to books like The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which were written to argue against medical treatments such as “the rest cure”.
When The Bone People was published in the 1980s, hitting children was still seen by far too many as an acceptable form of punishment. This book depicts the opposite, expressing discomfort with the concept of corporal punishment and showing it to be a form of violence in its own right. It navigates the uncomfortable experience of opposing something that is widely accepted. Unfortunately, as is often the case today, depicting is mistaken for condoning.
Keri Hulme was clear that the intention of showing such upsetting scenes was to shine a light on the often ignored issue of child abuse.
This book also makes the controversial choice of keeping the abuser in the child's life. While the abuse is firmly not without consequences such as jail, and more vitally the further disabling of Simon, there is a contentiously happy ending — one that does not come easily.
Kerewin and Joe are shown as needing to commit complete spiritual rebirths before coming near Simon and each other again. There is also a clear and queer argument against the nuclear family unit in the ending. Kerewin and Joe relying on only each other does not give them the tools to end the cycle of abuse. Kerewin is neither equipped to stop an abuser nor stable enough to parent Simon alone.
Medical and governmental systems attempt to solve the issue by separating the three, only adding to their trauma without solving the existing issues. It is only through community and a restorative justice model that the three can heal and Simon can live safely. Simon loves Kerewin and Joe, and Kerewin and Joe are shown to truly love him as well. He rebels violently against any kind of life that doesn’t include them. It is not simply that Kerewin and Joe want back in his life, Simon demands that they remain a part of his future. Instead of dismissing the victim's experience or revoking his autonomy, the book looks at this conflict in all its complications.
What would need to happen to return an abused child to the people who hurt him? First, there must be a complete transformation of both characters. Second, there must be consequences that lead to learning. Third, there must be a safety net of family and community to serve as a protector and support for all parties. Finally, there must be the consent of the victim, clearly and firmly given.
Ignoring Simon’s decisions is shown as near the ultimate evil. The sin of shutting down this child who needs to express himself constantly hurts him the most.
The book has been interpreted by many as a metaphorical exploration of the relationship between colonizers and Maori people, with Simon written as a sacrificial lamb. Is it possible instead that he is a firm reminder of the importance of respecting the self-determination of people who have been abused, even if they forgive those who hurt them? This stands as a direct contradiction to the long-held anxieties of abusers and colonizers alike. Considering their crimes unforgivable, they remain hidden to the detriment of those they harmed.
The Bone People makes it clear that addressing the issues head-on is necessary to not perpetuate the cycle of violence. Seeing the worst of the worst is clarifying and can result in reconciliation, as long as it comes with truth. Revenge is often not the response of people or communities who have been harmed. When it is, it is often because the harm has not been fully recognized or cannot be stopped any other way — as is the case with Simon stabbing Joe to stop the violence against him.
The paternalistic self-recriminations are a waste of time. Both Kerewin and Joe go first to self-hate-fueled downward spirals. They are only able to redeem themselves in any meaningful way after they accept that they are redeemable. They do not return to Simon initially, instead reaching out to Maori spirituality and going through intense changes first. Giving back some of what they owe, they are able to return and find Simon waiting for them.
In this book, Keri Hulmes imagines a world where perpetrators of harm are not discarded but held in community and as family. This view of family is largely based on Maori belief systems. It is this return to Maori family structures, not the enforced family structures of colonial powers, that heals deep hurts. The focus on restorative, self-determination, and expansive queer views of family makes the difference.
While the most sensationalized parts of this book are the violence, the anxieties over violence and the desire to shove it under the rug are the exact problems The Bone People addresses. Queerness, truth, restorative justice, victim-led solutions, and Maori understandings of family are needed in concert to resolve the book in any kind of happy ending. This happy ending is not reached through shortcuts or shielding people from consequences. The Bone People chooses uncomfortable conversations above comfortable silence over and over again. Through that, it has secured its legacy as a classic. Gothic, controversial, and complicated, this book made Keri Hulme the first Maori person and New Zealander to win The Booker Prize and remains unforgettable.
The Bone People begins with an isolated character, Kerewin Holmes, who is known to be based in part on the author Keri Hulmes. A person of mixed Maori and European heritage disconnected from her family, she lives in a spiral tower she built on the coast of New Zealand. Kerewin describes herself as having “No need of people, because she was self-fulfilling, delighted with the pre-eminence of her art and the future of her knowing hands.”
While exploring the beach, she encounters a lost sandal. Later, the shoe's owner is shown to be a young nonspeaking Pākehā (non-Polynesian New Zealander) boy speculated to be somewhere between six and eleven. After initially trying to send the child off, she finds herself begrudgingly charmed by him.
She learns his name is Simon, and his foster father is a Maori man named Joe. From there, the three begin to form a close bond. As this bond is formed, it becomes clear that each character is isolated in their own way. Joe has lost his wife and biological child; Kerewin has cut off her family for unspecified reasons; Simon has few friends because of his disabilities and traumas.
Just as the connection between the three starts to become habit, Kerewin learns that what she initially justified as occasional slaps from Simon’s father that made her uncomfortable are part of a violent pattern of abuse. Many of Simon’s outbursts that were chalked up to his disabilities and deep trauma from the shipwreck that landed him with Joe are recontextualized.
At this point, a lesser book may have made it easy to hate Joe. The Bone People refuses an easy out. Without justifying his abuse, Joe is portrayed as a man who deeply loves his son and seems to be honestly trying.
Kerewin invites Simon and Joe to her family cabin. During this idyllic trip, she confronts Joe and demands an end to the abuse. When Joe tries to hit Simon later, Kerewin intervenes physically and stops him. They make a pact; Joe will not hit Simon again and he will call Kerewin if he feels the urge to do so. Then, she will decide what should be done. This is again a point at which another novel might avoid uncomfortable conversations, following the easy route. The Bone People does not waiver in its clarity.
Things are initially better until, after seeing the violent death of a man, Simon acts out. Unable to communicate what he has seen, he goes to see Kerewin who usually takes time to understand him. After having a bad day herself, Kerewin instead demands he return a prized possession he had stolen. When Simon reacts by hitting her, she shoves him and he breaks the guitar Kerewin was given by her mother. Kerewin tells him to leave.
Simon, upset and without access to robust communication tools to explain what happened, takes a brick to various shop windows. The police bring him back to Joe. They have been called in response to Simon’s behaviour before, and they threaten to take Simon away from Joe if there is another incident.
Joe calls Kerewin to ask permission to beat Simon. Kerewin, focused on her own anger, agrees. She suggests he not "overdo it," while verbally lashing Simon herself. Upon being beaten, Simon for the first time retaliates by stabbing his father with a piece of glass he found alongside the dead body. Joe beats Simon severely and both are hospitalized. Simon is sent into a coma by the brutality and sustains hearing and brain damage. Joe is turned in to the police and goes to prison for three months. Since he has not legally adopted Simon, he loses custody.
Experiencing deep guilt for their part in the violence and aftermath, both Joe and Kerewin react drastically.
After he is released from prison, Joe tries to take his own life. Instead of dying, Joe is found and saved by a Maori elder who says he has been waiting for Joe. The man cares for him and explains that Joe is meant to care for a sacred waka (canoe) containing the spirit of a god. He leaves his land to Joe to care for after his death, and Joe does so.
Kerewin, having destroyed her tower and begun a nomadic lifestyle, meets a doctor seeking sleeping pills. She is rejected, learning that she may have stomach cancer. She is apathetic and plans to let herself die by it. Unable to convince her to seek treatment, the doctor relents. After taking mushroom-based medication, Kerwin is visited by a spirit and cured. This seems to be a cure on multiple levels. She burns her diaries in a symbolic rebirth and returns to take custody of Simon, who has woken from his coma and has been fighting to return to Kerewin and Joe.
The novel ends with Kerewin and Joe’s respective families coming together to raise Simon. Joe and Simon take Kerewin's last name. Instead of a tower, they live together in a home built like a spiral shell. In a different approach than Kerwin and Joe's earlier pact, the community is clear that any violence towards Simon will result in their intervention.
Being the author of such a sensational work, it can be surprising that Keri Hulme herself was of the ordinary sort. She had jobs as a fish-and-chips cook, a tobacco picker, and in her family, she was seen as a storyteller. Her nephew Matthew Salmons said:
“It was never about fame for her, she’s always been a storyteller. It was never about the glitz and glam, she just had stories to share. She gave us as a family the greatest gift of all, which would be reconnecting us with our Whakapapa Māori and reigniting that passion for our history, our people that had been lost over a couple of generations.”
The novelist was born on March 9th, 1947 to a family with five other children, she said of her family:
"Our family comes from diverse people: Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe (South Island Māori iwi); Orkney Islanders; Lancashire folk; Faroese and/or Norwegian migrants,"
From the beginning, she was quite open about her background. She writes about her experience as a mixed Maori person, exploring the complications of that. As the first Maori person to win the Booker Prize, with a book that was largely about being Maori, there was a lot of attention paid to her heritage; not all of it being given in the best faith. Fellow author C.K. Stead, who had a history of controversy around his treatment of the Maori identity, would question whether Keri Hulme had a right to write the story she did.
Since this criticism came from a Pakeha person and was not rooted in the Maori community, it was given much attention but deserves less consideration.
Surprised by her Booker Prize win, Keri Hulme would go on to start another novel, though it would not be completed before her death of dementia in 2021. There are small snippets of it that she read aloud to the public, and from those pieces, it is clear she continued to be a singular writer.
Self-identifying as an asexual, aromantic person, her place in the queer community is set more obviously than some. An interview with Shelley Bridgeman and the New Zealand Herald gives us an insight into her life and experiences as a queer person. Both in her work and in this interview she was very clear:
“I am not sick, I am not deficient; I may not be normal but I am thoroughly natural. And I don't want to be any different from the way I am.”
When asked the best thing about being asexual she said:
“Well, I can both concentrate on other kinds of relationships (family, friends, and with the rest of the natural world) and be able to be quite happy with my own company. Note: I would not be happy with just my own company! I need my family and friends but don't have to be with them all the time.”
Mostly remembered for her novel The Bone People, she wrote short story collections as well. The Bone People itself took twelve years to start going through the publication process properly. Submitting it to publishers, she continued tinkering with it but refused to make many suggested edits, waiting for the perfect publishing opportunity that would be willing to publish the book she envisioned. Before she found that perfect opening, she would consider using the novel as a doorstop if things didn’t work out. Luckily for the world, Spiral Collective came along. A feminist press allowed Keri Hulme to keep her novel the way she wanted it and that choice paid off.
Throughout her authorial journey, her family supported her financially and artistically. At one point, after winning a land ballot in Southern New Zealand and building an octagonal home there, she was able to settle for forty years before property taxes got too high. Though her work was successful she still worked odd jobs for much of her life, spending time in nature and learning skills that she would later weave into her work.
The first writer to win the Booker Prize with a debut novel, Keri Hulme made quite a splash with her work. Some consider it to be gratuitous, and some of the judges of the Booker Prize said they would only let it win the prize over their dead bodies, it has earned its place on bookshelves around the world. An underrated queer classic, the story of the book and the author deserve more space in discussions of queer literature.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Anne Stiles. (2007, August 4). No sex please, we’re asexual—Lifestyle News. NZ Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/no-sex-please-were-asexual/ZVQQVM2TP5BWAKQCUSCH6F3TNE/
Anne Stiles. (2013, March 18). Looking back: Rewriting the rest cure in The Secret Garden. BPS. https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/looking-back-rewriting-rest-cure-secret-garden
Aotearoa Reads Details | Read NZ. (2022, July 11). https://web.archive.org/web/20220711015515/https://www.read-nz.org/aotearoa-reads-details/does-the-bone-people-cut-it-as-a-kiwi-classic
Barker, C. (2006). From Narrative Prosthesis to Disability Counternarrative: Reading the Politics of Difference in “Potiki and the Bone People.” Journal of New Zealand Literature (JNZL), 24, 130–147.
Bartlett, R. A. (1997). Interview: ‘The wonder of words winds through all worlds’ Keri Hulme talks to Rima Alicia Bartlett. Wasafiri, 12(25), 83–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690059708589547
Contemporary understandings of whānau. (n.d.). [Web page]. Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga. Retrieved October 28, 2024, from https://teara.govt.nz/en/whanau-maori-and-family/page-1
E.R. Zarevich. (2024, March 20). Our Favorite Books with Asexual Characters. Early Bird Books. https://earlybirdbooks.com/books-with-asexual-characters
Frost, N. (2021, December 29). Keri Hulme, New Zealand’s First Booker Prize Winner, Dies at 74. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/books/keri-hulme-dead.html
George P. Landow. (2002, March 15). Kerewin’s Asexuality. https://www.postcolonialweb.org/nz/kerihulme/kh6.html
How Keri Hulme’s The Bone People changed the way we read now | The Booker Prizes. (2023, March 30). https://web.archive.org/web/20230330084616/https://thebookerprizes.com/keri-hulme-the-bone-people-story-history-critique
Hulme, K., & Bryson, J. (1994). Keri Hulme in conversation with John Bryson. Antipodes, 8(2), 131–135.
Kelly Ana Morey. (n.d.). In Memory of Keri Hulme – Academy of New Zealand Literature. Retrieved October 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221122054816/https://www.anzliterature.com/feature/in-memory-of-keri-hulme/
Keri Hulme. (n.d.-a). Retrieved October 28, 2024, from https://www.read-nz.org/writers-files/writer/hulme-keri
Keri Hulme. (n.d.-b). Retrieved October 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230330072439/https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/keri-hulme
Keri Hulme. (1998). Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Keri-Hulme
Keri Hulme. (2018, May 18). The Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/keri-hulme
Keri Hulme discusses writing and The Bone People Interview on ABC Between the Lines. (2022, March 1). [Video recording]. The VHS and Beta History Archive.
Makereti, T. (2022, January 6). Tina Makereti on Keri Hulme’s legacy. WOMAN. https://womanmagazine.co.nz/tina-makereti-keri-hulme-legacy/
Melhop, V. (1999). The Making of Ho(l)mes: A Symbolic Reading of the bone people. Journal of New Zealand Literature (JNZL), 17, 99–109.
Mercer, E. (2009). “Frae ghosties an ghoulies deliver us”: Keri Hulme’s the bone people and the Bicultural Gothic. Journal of New Zealand Literature (JNZL), 27, 111–130.
Parekowhai, C., & Evans, M. (2022, February 1). Keri Hulme obituary. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/01/keri-hulme-obituary
Przybylo, E., & Cooper, D. (2014). Asexual Resonances. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 20(3), 297–318. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2422683
The Booker Prizes (Director). (2022, January 26). Keri Hulme on her 1985 Booker Prize Winning Novel “The Bone People” [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2XzAZXG1s