All tagged New Zealand

Keri Hulme & The Bone People

Harper-Hugo Darling

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. 

Georgina Beyer

Marc Zinaman

After enduring a transient childhood and a youth burdened with struggles surrounding both her gender and Māori identities, Georgina Beyer emerged as both a transformative and trailblazing figure in New Zealand’s political and social arenas. She became the world’s first openly transgender mayor, only to follow up that landmark achievement by being elected a Member of Parliament and becoming the world’s first openly transgender person to hold significant public office. Beyer thus broke new ground for trans visibility on an international level, and paved the way for both greater acceptance and wider representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in politics. Her serpentine path towards said life in government included both time spent as a sex worker as well as a tragic act of sexual violence enacted against her, each of which emboldened her with a sense of resilience, courage, and authenticity. Beyer ultimately weaponized her identities and life experiences in a political career marked by an unwavering commitment to advocate for marginalized communities, fight for human rights, and continuously challenge societal norms.

Emmeline Freda Du Faur

Harper-Hugo Darling

To discuss the life of Emmeline Freda Du Faur is to examine the realities of being the first. The difficulties, expectations, rewards, loneliness, victories, and complications. In the study of history, there is a particular preoccupation with the first, the beginning, in queer history doubly so. Even now, there feels like so many firsts in front of our community; witnessing these beginnings is a mixed blessing: the pain of suppressed voices and stolen opportunities tangled with the victory of passing a marker, going farther.

Katherine Mansfield

Harper-Hugo Darling

Queer history is a profoundly entangled beast. Within this project, we have found the same names coming up over and over. Edward Carpenter, Virginia Woolf, and Oscar Wilde are some of the most common, and all have their connection to Katherine Mansfield. Originally named Kathleen Beauchamp, she would later take on Katherine Mansfield as a pen name. This name followed her for the rest of her life. Though she died young, she had an eventful life and left a legacy of queerness in her wake.

Carmen Rupe

Harper-Hugo Darling
Happy Endings

An iconic drag queen from New Zealand, Carmen Rupe was well known for many things. An activist, runner of a brothel, politician, and performer, her life was a full one. Though the people within her community were very fond of her, and she is remembered as one of the great game-changers of the time, she was not completely well-liked. Police and politicians both had at best rocky relationships with the woman and at worst violently hated her and all she stood for. Despite all the obstacles set up for her to trip over, Carmen was able to live to the relatively old age of seventy-five before she died of kidney failure.

Takatāpui

Harper-Hugo Darling

Language can be a good indicator towards the attitudes of a society; looking at language can, in fact, be an invaluable resource for finding the role queer people maintained in any given culture. From the esteemed baté of the Crow nation to the use of "fairy" as a jab at femme queer men and trans women. Today we will explore a word that finds its roots in New Zealand with the Māori people, and see what insight it can give us into queer people's place in Māori culture.