On this episode we discuss our July 2023 book club pickThe Imaginary Lives of James Poneke by Tina Makereti. A coming-of-age story of a Maori boy, armed with a British education and eager to see the world, who ventures to London to be a living exhibit for a British artist's exhibition. It's an epic tale written in the style of Victorian fiction, but told from the perspective of an indigenous youth growing up under colonization.
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Timecodes:
01:45 - Book jacket description
02:40 - First impressions and David Copperfield vibes
06:50 - Hemi's upbringing
08:42 - Theme of aligning yourself with white majority for survival and privileges
11:00 - Hemi’s adoption into a new Maori tribe
11:36 - Empire’s goal of erasing marginalized cultural identities
13:28 - Hemi agrees to become a living exhibit
16:09 - Being tainted by colonization education
17:45 - Hemi's first impression of Victorian England
18:50 - Victorian England’s class divisions
19:17 - The Angus family
21:42 - Hemi’s introduction to other living exhibits
22:40 - Representation matters
25:10 - Intro to Billy Neptune & Henrietta
27:47 - Hemi's sexuality awakening
30:12-31:30 Trigger of SA
31:33 - What is savage and what is civilized?
32:33 - Women's limited rights in Victorian London
35:00 - Hemi’s time as a sailor and camaraderie with non-white crewmen
39:25-40:15 Trigger of SA
40:20 - Life on the margins outside civilization’s watch
43:17- What is home?
47:22 - Ending
50:57 - Hemi meeting a Black doctor and learning about intersectionality
53:08 - Taika Waititi options book for adaptation
- https://variety.com/2020/film/asia/taika-waititi-piki-films-indigenous-film-tv-colonization-1234691066/
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The Books & Boba August 2023 pick is Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai
This podcast is part of Potluck: An Asian American Podcast Collective
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Don't miss an all AAPI production of HENRY VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts at The Public in NYC
The National Asian American Theatre Company’s acclaimed production of HENRY VI: A TRILOGY IN TWO PARTS brings an all-AANHPI cast to The Public Theater for a decades-spanning saga of Joan of Arc, warring dukes, and the bloody birth of the War of the Roses. Adapted by Stephen Brown-Fried, this is Shakespeare like you've never experienced it.
Part 1: Foreign Wars opens with a king dead, an infant on the throne, and a country already coming apart at the seams. Part 2: Civil Strife picks up nearly 30 years later...and the bloodbath is yet to come. Simmering feuds explode into the War of the Roses, and nothing will ever be the same. Performances from June 9 through July 19!
Use code H6BC for $59 tickets!
Henry VI at The Public with an all AAPI cast
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