The paper considers Patricia Grace’s novel Cousins (1992) in terms of its dialogic engagement with dominant national histories, as family history/saga and the foregrounding of resistance narratives. The novel traces the complexity of the way Maori women’s freedom of choice is connected to responsibility for the future of individuals, group identity and the land. It exemplifies an emergence of Mâori English language narratives about women’s histories, mana wâhine (Mâori women’s power) and stories into the psychic space of nationalism. The fictional and elegiac evocation of the losses experienced by Mâori soldiers and their families shows the effects of their participation in the global narratives of European/American war as a struggle for freedom and the effect it had at home in Aotearoa New Zealand, especially on womenfolk. The publication of the novel in the 1990s and its continuing relevance to Pacific, global and national narratives about rights and responsibilities will be discussed.
The lack of European temporal markers in Cousins evokes the structures of myth, raising questions about the relationship between personal choice, ideological nationalist structures and historical events. Julia Kristeva’s differentiation of the main aims of two eras of feminism, pre- and post-1968, is consistent with the concerns of Grace’s narratives in Cousins; in addition the novel explores questions specific to Maori women’s histories and mana wâhine. The novel can be read as a valorization of the reassertion of Mâori women’s ties to each other, as indicative of the ambivalence and splitting in narratives of national culture about individualism, freedom and social responsibility.