I Have Loved Me a Man

From the Old Mill Disco in Timaru to San Francisco's ACT UP protests, through Jazzercise and drag, AIDS and homosexual law reform, I Have Loved Me a Man takes readers inside the social revolution that has moved New Zealand from the 1960s to the present day through the story of the one, the only, queer Maori performance artist: Mika. Mika grew up in Timaru, was 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 outrageous stage shows that toured the world, played a policeman on television in Shark in the Park and came out on screen with Harvey Keitel, playing a takatapui role in Jane Campion's Academy Award-winning film The Piano. Mika has never been in the closet: his life has been an ongoing production of both the fabulous and the revolutionary. This highly visual book interweaves archival and historical research with images hand-picked from Mika's extensive archive to reveal the life and times of a queer brown boy from Aotearoa who took on the big white world.