Spotlight on: JC Sturm
One of New Zealand’s leading female Māori short story writers and poets was a key member of Wellington City Libraries’ team for 23 years.
Jacquie Baxter, who died in 2009, built the New Zealand Reference Collection over two decades and was highly regarded and remembered for her quiet advocacy for Māori customers, extensive knowledge of NZ published works, and passion for excellence in librarianship.
But the public will know her as the ground breaking JC Sturm (Te Kare Papuni/ Jacquie Baxter). Long overshadowed by her first husband, James K. Baxter, JC Sturm is now recognised as a unique and important voice in New Zealand literature in her own right.
She is also notable for being one of the first Māori women to complete a university degree (a BA in anthropology at Canterbury University in 1949) and to attain a NZ Master’s degree (in Philosophy, VUW). She joined the Wellington Public Library in 1969 in what is now the City Gallery building, and later she worked in Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui.
Jacquie was descended from rangatira lines, Te Whakatōhea from Ōpōtiki Mai Tawhiti on her father’s side; and Taranaki Iwi, Te Pakakohi and Te Ātiawa on her mother’s. Jacquie discovered her love of writing, and started articulating her experiences through words, during a long-recovery period after rheumatic fever at the age of 11. She was the single Māori child in classes of pākehā children. She experienced bullying for a term at a young age, which she later wrote about, but she was generally happy at school where she made many friends. “Much of her prose and poetry describes negotiating a place between worlds and managing uncomfortably overlapping cultural and personal identities1”.
Through circumstance Jacquie was fostered at the age of four and later adopted by the Sturms. She discovered in her late teens she had more opportunities than other young Māori, and throughout her life embraced Māoritanga and tried to make a difference for her people.
Jacquie began writing poetry at university in 1946, with her work appearing in student magazines under her initials. Her early poetry is mainly personal and confessional. In 1954 she switched to writing short stories and adopted J.C. Sturm as her pen name. Her stories appeared in a variety of journals and by the early-1960s she had a book ready for publication but was unable to find a publisher.
Two of these stories were selected by Witi Ihimaera for his anthology in Māori writing of 1982. Her stories were published in 1983, as The house of the talking cat, and in 1996 she published her first collection of poetry, Dedications, which earned an Honours Award (1997 Montana NZ Book Awards). This was followed by two more publications of her prose and poetry, with more works discovered after her death.
She will in 2025 be the subject of a major new publication collecting together all her creative writing, including a number of previously unpublished stories. Jacquie was a key figure in the origins of Māori literature in English in Aotearoa and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2003.
The citation noted her experiences as “emblematic of the difficulties Māori writers of the period faced in their efforts to be taken seriously; the successes of her later years represented an extraordinary record of achievement and perseverance in the face of considerable odds.” [Source: Ngā tāngata Taumata Rau]
Jacquie in Wellington in the mid-1950s, around the time J.C. Sturm’s first stories were published. [Photographer unknown]
We invite you to learn more about Jacquie and the relevance of her work today:
Ngā Tāngata Taumata Rau, Dictionary of NZ biography, Sturm, Jacqueline Cecilia – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – Te Ara
Wellington City Libraries: A lament for Jacquie Baxter
JC Sturm talks about her life and writing, rent the video: Broken journey : the life and art of J.C. Sturm
An essay by Jack McDonald, about his great-grandmother JC Sturm: Baxter Week: My Nana, Jacquie Sturm | The Spinoff
Iwi Whitiāhua, NZ Onscreen, Broken journey, The Life and Art of JC Sturm (television full length) Broken Journey - The Life and Art of JC Sturm | Television | NZ On Screen
J. C. Sturm. When we were organising a women writers… | by @devt | Spiral Collectives | Medium
[Caption for top image: Jacquie with Keri Hulme and Roma Potiki at the Going West Literary Festival, Titirangi, 1997]