Christina Thompson

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

The daughter of a professor, Christina Thompson read widely and deeply from an early age, making her way from C. S. Lewis through Tolstoy and Flaubert and ultimately finding her greatest influence, Joseph Conrad, “a Pole who thought in French and wrote in English.”

From Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story:

“‘Contact’ is what we call it when two previously unacquainted groups meet for the very first time…It describes a moment of sudden wonder, a tectonic shift, that undermines old certainties and opens up whole new views.”

After college, prompted by the alluring Outback vistas being served up by the Australian film industry of the early 1980s, she applied for a fellowship at the University of Melbourne.

Thompson began writing, mostly book reviews and academic papers. She yearned to write more creatively, but had no interest in short stories or novels. During her graduate work, which looked at indigenous Pacific peoples and their first contact with Europeans, she made a stopover in New Zealand. There she observed an interracial pub fight and talked with a native Maori man named Seven, whom she would later marry.

The resulting convergence of her own culture with that of her husband found expression in Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, a hybrid travel book/personal history/anthro-love-story that forced the author to uncover the dark legacy of her own maternal ancestors.

Thompson is also editor of Harvard Review and teaches in the Harvard University Extension School. She and her husband and three sons live outside of Boston, where she continues to write.

Grand Rum Toddy*

The rum ration was a daily amount of rum that used to be given to sailors on Royal Navy ships. The last navy issuing the rum ration was New Zealand, which abolished the practice in 1990.

1 oz. rum

1/2 shot of Grand Marnier

1/3 shot of lime juice

Hot water to fill glass

Lime wedge, optional.

Combine rum, Grand Marnier, and lime juice in a glass mug. Fill with hot water and stir. Add lime wedge if desired. Serves 1.

*As made on BookGirlTV video interview with Christina Thompson.