Post by NZBC on Aug 10, 2008 8:58:18 GMT 12
Ribbons of Grace: An Interview with Maxine Alterio
My family has a long association with Arrowtown. We¡¯ve been going there together for many, many years. I was about twelve when we were there on a Christmas holiday, when I actually overheard a conversation that turned out to be the inspiration for Ribbons of Grace. I think we were at a New Year¡¯s Eve party, and I heard two men talking, and one said ¡®Well, when they laid that Chinese miner out they discovered that he was a she¡¯. I was really fascinated by that, and also, I suppose, because as children we played up in Arrowtown a lot in the Chinese settlement. There were some abandoned cottages, old buildings, a shop... we used to imagine ourselves as people from other countries, and adventurers, and I always thought that the Chinese seemed very brave and honourable to come from so far away and to work in what was quite a difficult environment in the 1870s. There was a lot of prejudice, and I often wondered what it would be like to be a Chinese person in a country like New Zealand, and how they managed. When I started to think about what it would be like to be a woman disguised as a male, that added another layer.
lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/1661
My family has a long association with Arrowtown. We¡¯ve been going there together for many, many years. I was about twelve when we were there on a Christmas holiday, when I actually overheard a conversation that turned out to be the inspiration for Ribbons of Grace. I think we were at a New Year¡¯s Eve party, and I heard two men talking, and one said ¡®Well, when they laid that Chinese miner out they discovered that he was a she¡¯. I was really fascinated by that, and also, I suppose, because as children we played up in Arrowtown a lot in the Chinese settlement. There were some abandoned cottages, old buildings, a shop... we used to imagine ourselves as people from other countries, and adventurers, and I always thought that the Chinese seemed very brave and honourable to come from so far away and to work in what was quite a difficult environment in the 1870s. There was a lot of prejudice, and I often wondered what it would be like to be a Chinese person in a country like New Zealand, and how they managed. When I started to think about what it would be like to be a woman disguised as a male, that added another layer.
lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/1661