Out of print – digital edition available through ebook retailers and our BWB Collections platform.
In her first book, A Small Price to Pay, Ann Beaglehole traced the experiences of European refugees to New Zealand in the 1930s. In Facing the Past she focuses on the lives of a younger generation – the children of those wartime immigrants, whose perceptions and experiences of both the old and the new world were very different from their parents'.
At school, in the neighbourhood, or on the sportsfield, many of them were painfully aware of being 'outsiders' in a society unused to cultural diversity. Yet their need to belong was frequently complicated by loyalty to the very different ideals and expectations of their parents. As one of them comments I was getting two messages... the 'always remember,' message and the 'start from now' message. Based on a wide range of interviews as well as documentary evidence from second-generation refugees worldwide, this is a fascinating account of the lives of immigrant children growing up in the decades between the 1940s and 1960s.
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Introduction
1. Different Worlds
2. The children are a triumph: In pursuit of a New Zealand childhood
3. Refugee children at school
4. Adolescence: The gap widens
5. Language: To renounce or remember?
6. Facing the past
7. The ambiguities of assimilation: The second generation of adults
Conclusion
Bibliographical Notes
Appendix 1. Main topics covered in the interviews
Appendix 2a. Birthplaces of persons born in New Zealand and overseas, 1936-1966
Appendix 2b. Total New Zealand population, 1936-1966
Appendix 3. Major religious professions in New Zealand, 1926-1966
Appendix 4. Sources
References
Select Bibliography