I Have Loved Me A Man: The Life and Times of Mika

This book chronicles in words and pictures the life of Mika, an iconic gay Maori performance artist. Mika takes us deep inside the gay and Maori rights movements and reveals to readers a fabulous revolution in performance and identity.

Mika (Neil Gudsell) grew up in Timaru, adopted into a white family, and learnt Maori culture from the back of a cereal box. He discovered disco in the 1970s, worked with Carmen, Dalvanius Prime, Merata Mita and others to develop a stage career and tour the world, played a policeman on TV in Shark in the Park and came out on screen with Harvey Keitel, playing takatapui in Jane Campion's Academy Award-winning film The Piano.

This highly visual book interweaves archival and socio-historical research with approximately 200 images that have been hand-picked from Mika's extensive archive. Mika has never been in the closet: his life has been an ongoing production of both the fabulous and the revolutionary.

This book takes the readers inside the social history of New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day through the lens provided by an iconic gay Maori performance artist.

Sharon Mazer is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Auckland University of Technology. She is the author of Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle (1998).

Featured in the 7 May 2018 NZ / Pasifika newsletter.
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