The Prologue offers glimpses from the protagonists’ lives right before the point at which the novel opens.

The book is divided into four main parts, as well as a Prologue and Epilogue. Metaphorically, the novel can also be seen as a blueprint for the disparate parts of New Zealand society to come together and coexist as a united, albeit nonbiological, family. The Bone People is a psychological portrait, as well as a bildungsroman, of three social outcasts who overcome a number of hardships and personal failings to come together and form an unusual family unit. This study guide refers to the Penguin Books edition. Unlike many other authors writing from a postcolonial standpoint, Hulme depicts a deeply intertwined society whose parts can no longer be separated and must learn to coexist without losing their distinctiveness. The book examines a number of problems impacting the Maori community, such as domestic violence and abuse, alcoholism, social isolation, sexism, and racism. Such statements shed light on the tensions underlying a postcolonial New Zealand society caught between two extremes: essentialization of ethnic identities and cultural appropriation.

Stead, arguing that the author’s Maori identity is not authentic and she should not have received the award for Maori writing. After its publication and international success, the novel sparked some controversy in New Zealand, with a number of critics, such as C.K. It was finally taken on by a small independent publishing house, Spiral, founded by a feminist collective, among whose members was the well-known Maori leader, writer, and healthcare activist Irihapeti Ramsden. Due to its modernist style and nonstandard spelling and word use, The Bone People was initially rejected by several established publishers on the grounds of being difficult to understand.

The bone people review