Most touching, however, is Gracie, a thirteen-year-old who is trying to lead a good life without any good examples to follow. Their sensitive second son Boogie has been arrested for associating with car thieves. The oldest son is part of a street gang which covers their faces in traditional tattoos and uses their own violence for protection against others. Here in the city the prevailing “culture” centers around bars, rather than the ancient meeting houses.īeth Heke, the mother, loves her violent husband Jake, despite his physical abuse of her when he is drunk, and she cares deeply about her children, but she is powerless to protect them or herself from Jake’s rages. Beth and Jake Heke and their five children, along with numerous other Maori families, live in an urban ghetto of government-supported housing, isolated from the rest of society and isolated, too, from their old rural culture, which once gave pride and a sense of identity to Maori families. In a narr ative so hard-hitting that the viewer actually feels battered by the time the book reaches its conclusion, a Maori family with five children must deal with urban violence, poverty, drugs, alcoholism, unemployment, gang warfare, rape, physical and mental abuse, suicide, and a host of other horrific family problems, all depicted graphically. The Maori urban life that New Zealand tourists never see.
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