Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1908–1984)
Auteur van Teacher
Over de Auteur
Writer and educator, Sylvia Ashton-Warner was born in Stratford, New Zealand, on December 17, 1908. As a teacher of Maori children, she pioneered a pedagogy geared to their culture and interests. The methods were outlined in her autobiography, Teacher (1963). Ashton-Warner also taught at an toon meer experimental school in the United States and detailed her experiences in Spearpoint: Teacher in America. Her novels including Spinster, Incense to Idols, and Bell Call often feature strong women. Ashton-Warner died in 1984. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Werken van Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Ashton-Warner, Sylvia Archive 1 exemplaar
Spinister 1 exemplaar
Gerelateerde werken
In Deadly Earnest: A Collection of Fiction by New Zealand Women 1870s–1980s (1989) — Medewerker — 7 exemplaren
The Teaching Experience: An Introduction to Education Through Literature (1976) — Medewerker — 1 exemplaar
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Gangbare naam
- Ashton-Warner, Sylvia
- Geboortedatum
- 1908-12-17
- Overlijdensdatum
- 1984-04-28
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- New Zealand
- Geboorteplaats
- Stratford, New Zealand
- Plaats van overlijden
- Tauranga, New Zealand
- Woonplaatsen
- Stratford, New Zealand (birth)
Tauranga, New Zealand
Aspen, Colorado, USA
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Opleiding
- Auckland Teachers' Training College
Wairarapa College
Wellington Girls' College, Wellington, New Zealand - Beroepen
- teacher
writer
poet
autobiographer
novelist - Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Order of the British Empire (Member)
- Korte biografie
- Sylvia Ashton-Warner was born in Stratford, New Zealand. Her parents were Francis Ashton Warner, an English immigrant with an aristocratic heritage but little else, and his wife Margaret Maxwell, a teacher. After her father's health deteriorated, her mother became the sole breadwinner of their large family and they moved frequently for her work at small rural schools. As a child, Sylvia dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. She attended Wellington Girls’ College and Wadestown School before passing the examination to enter Auckland Teachers’ Training College. In 1932, she married Keith Henderson, a fellow student, with whom she had three children. She spent many years teaching Maori children, often using pioneering educational techniques that she later described in her 1963 book Teacher and in her autobiography. Her first novel Spinster (1958), published in England, was listed by Time magazine as one of the top 10 books of the year, and was adapted into the 1961 film Two Loves (also known as The Spinster). Her own life story was adapted for the 1985 biographical film Sylvia! Other novels included Incense to Idols (1960), Bell Call (1965), Greenstone (1966) and Myself (1966). She published three volumes of autobiography beginning with I Passed This Way (1979), which won the 1980 New Zealand Book Award for nonfiction. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1982.
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- Populariteit
- #48,444
- Waardering
- 3.7
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For the Maori, whose history speaks of warrior spirit and victory, one of those curses is that they have experienced defeat and demoralization during the years before this tale begins. The “clearing” is sited along an ancestral river where whites live in “This Side,” Maori in “That Side,” names giving emphasis to Maori loss and hinting at confined freedom. Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s humorous and gentle yet sometimes violent novel is set at the time of her own childhood during WWI and shortly thereafter. It focuses on the Considines (“Puppa” and “Mumma”), a white couple with a plenitude of white children filling the land, and on their young granddaughter, Huia, who lives with them. Huia is unique among the children because she is great-granddaughter of the current rangatira (Maori chief) and will become “paramount chieftainess” of the river tribes” when he dies.
Huia’s name is that of a bird native to New Zealand that only recently had gone extinct. This, and Huia’s one-quarter Maori ancestry, help make the story seem a drama of modern influence contending with stressed or fading hereditary identity. Whenever Huia crosses the river she experiences “emotional racial transition.” Greenstone’s “greenstone” is a tiki symbolizing familial and tribal history and pride, to be a source of comfort and strength in challenge. Ashton-Warner is attentive to these themes, filling her book with Maori words (glossed at the end), plus songs and chants and tales, including some composed by Puppa. Huia feels great loyalty to Puppa but in no way doubts her heritage is Maori, a feeling that grows as she does.
By the end of Greenstone, Ashton-Warner makes us feel as though we have visited a place that had in it great beauty amidst inherited pain.… (meer)