Audio only
Length1h 3m
About this audiobook
The award-winning first book of poetry by Chris Tse – now available as an audiobook.
Winner – Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
The world is full of murder
and words are usually
the first to go
In 1905, white supremacist Lionel Terry murdered the Cantonese gold prospector Joe Kum Yung to draw attention to his crusade to rid New Zealand of Chinese and other East Asian immigrants.
Chris Tse uses this story – and its reenactment for a documentary a hundred years later – to reflect on the experiences of Chinese migrants of the period, their wishes and hopes, their estrangement and alienation, their ghostly reverberation through a white-majority culture. Along the way we visit the gold fields of the south, a shipwreck in the Hokianga that left the spirits of 500 Chinese goldminers in an unmemorialised limbo for a hundred years and the streets of Newtown, Wellington, where Lionel Terry went out one night ' looking for a Chinaman' .
Chris Tse' s flickering use of imagery, resonant language and flexible pronouns are particularly suited to the historic events he describes and the viewpoints he shifts through.
How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes is a welcome poetic addition to New Zealand literature.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.4 (68)
Includes Goodreads
GenrePoetry
Length1 hr 3 mins
Narrated byChris Tse
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJan 6, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
5Sectionfour
2Sectionone
6Sectionfive
3Sectiontwo
7Acknowledgements
4Sectionthree
8Closingcredits
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