How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes

(Paperback)

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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.

Author Bio

Chris Tse is an editor, writer, actor, musician and occasional filmmaker. He studied English literature and film at Victoria University of Wellington where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing. His poetry has appeared in AUP New Poets 4, Turbine, Sport, Landfall and Cha, and he has had short stories recorded for Radio New Zealand. He was the winner of the 2009 NZ Chinese Association/Listener short story competition.