As Real as the Spice Girls: Representing Identity in Twenty-first Century New Zealand Literature

Abstract

The concept of authenticity has long been inextricable from identity in Aotearoa New Zealand, ever since Allen Curnow famously urged midtwentieth century artists to focus on the local and the specific in order to create an island nation clearly differentiated from Britain. Recent writers, however, particularly in works that have appeared since the turn of the century, are increasingly questioning just what 'authenticity' means in relation to identity. There is a marked contrast between the part-Maori, part-Pakeha protagonist in Keri Hulmes' 1984 novel the bone people, who explains that 'by blood, flesh, and inheritance, I am but an eighth Maori, by heart, spirit, and inclination, I feel all Maori', and the Fijian New Zealander in Toa Fraser's 1999 play No. 2, who insists that her Nanna is 'about as real Fijian as the Spice Girls'. Writers such as Fraser, Paula Morris and Eleanor Cattan represent identity not as inherent or authentic but as constructed and performed.