Keri Hulme

Margery Fee (University of British Columbia)

Ed. by Jennifer Lawn, Massey University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.1.2: New Zealand Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Doreen D'Cruz (Massey University), Jennifer Lawn (Massey University), John C. Ross (Massey University), Mark Williams (Victoria University of Wellington)

Dates

Born 9 Apr 1947
Died 27 Dec 2021
Activity 1985-2021

Places

Born in New Zealand
Active in New Zealand

Cultural Identities

New Zealand Maori

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet
Story-writer

Resources

Hulme's Works

Save to Bookshelf

In 1985, Hulme won the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel

the bone people

(1984). Its Maori perspective and asexual heroine were unusual, as was its vision of a colonial New Zealand transformed into a postcolonial Aotearoa, where Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) and Maori would eat and drink together at the same table. It resonated with another nation-building novel: the 1981 winner, Salman Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children

similarly imagined an unpartitioned India.

Hulme was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1947, the eldest of six children. Her father, a first-generation New Zealander whose parents came from Lancashire, died when she was eleven. Her mother, part Orkney Scots and part Ngai Tahu Maori, supported the children working as a clerk, shop owner and manager.

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2104 words

Citation: Fee, Margery. "Keri Hulme". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 September 2006; last revised 30 December 2018. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2251, accessed 24 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article