The Facebook subtitles are rickety but the enthusiasm is unequivocal. “It’s a novel that slammed like the waves of the Pacific Ocean,” says the reviewer from La Curieuse Librairie Troquet, a tiny bookshop in southwest France. She holds up her copy of Bones Bay, the French edition of Becky Manawatu’s Auē. “What this book offers [is] its myths, the magical realism of this culture and discover another New Zealand away from clichés, Māori tattoos, surfing or rugby.”
Like those far-reaching Pacific waves, Manawatu’s debut novel has travelled the world. Since winning the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards’ Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and first book of fiction award in 2020, it has been published in France, Argentina, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Turkey and, through Scribe Publications, the UK and US (Scribe will also publish Manawatu’s follow-up novel, Kataraina, due out later this year). Auē was lauded in the New York Times as “a striking tapestry of fierce love and unflinching violence”; it was held by a smiling Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City spin-off, And Just Like That.
“That was so cool,” says Mākaro Press publisher Mary McCallum. “We were so stoked by that.”
Publishers and writers around the country are stoked as books, particularly fiction and poetry, by Māori and Pasifika writers are finding their way on to bookshelves and review pages across the globe.
This year, Māori-owned independent publisher Huia Publishers was named Children’s Publisher of the Year for Oceania at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK and Avid Reader Press in the US published Rebecca K Reilly’s debut novel Greta & Valdin, now shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize; Simon & Schuster published its second crime novel by Michael Bennett, Return to Blood; Hachette UK released 17 Years Later, the new book by JP Pomare.
Tina Makereti’s new novel The Mires is to be released by Australian publisher Ultimo Press in Australia and HarperVia in the US; Tauhou: A Novel by Makereti’s daughter Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall, of Māori and Coast Salish descent (an indigenous Canadian people), was one of six finalists in the Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
The two collections of poetry by Tayi Tibble, Poūkahangatus and Rangikura, have been published by US publishing house Knopf to acclaim. Her work – sassy, sensual and defiant – has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Granta. The New York Times headlined its profile “Tayi Tibble, Māori Poet and ‘It Girl’.”
“Internationally, there is a very deep and engaged growing interest in indigenous authors telling their own stories,” says literary agent Nadine Rubin Nathan of High Spot Literary, who brokered international rights to Auē on behalf of Mākaro Press. “We’ve seen it for a couple of years now and it doesn’t seem to be waning.”
In the US, she says, this has been driven to a large extent by identity politics, “but each country in its own way has embraced the fact that publishing has traditionally been very white – at first very male and white.”
Tokenism at play
The UK has been slower off the mark. After a flurry of interest in black and Asian novelists in the 1980s and 90s, interest began to lag. As Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo wrote in 2015, “For the past few years, we have seen a return to the literary invisibility of the past, concealed by a deceptive tokenism.”
Three years later, when fiction writers Makereti, Witi Ihimaera, Paula Morris and Pasifika poets Karlo Mila and David Eggleton were invited to discuss their work alongside an exhibition of Oceanic art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, organisers were scrabbling to rustle up more chairs as the larger-than-expected audience poured into the room.
Makereti’s novel, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, had just been published in New Zealand; Black Marks on the White Page, a compilation of Māori, Pasifika and Aboriginal writing co-edited by Makereti and Ihimaera, had been released the year before.
“But nothing could be bought in UK,” says Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore). “British publishers weren’t publishing us. The audience kept asking, ‘Why can’t we get hold of your books?’
“We know we have something unique to offer, we know we’ve got stories that can’t be found anywhere else in the world; we know everyone, everywhere is interested in literature that does something different from what they’ve seen before. The only ones who didn’t seem to understand it at that time were the publishers.”
Publishers in the UK are now pivoting back to Bame – black, Asian and minority ethnic – or Bipoc – black, indigenous and people of colour – writers (although the acronyms are contentious).
The Guardian 4th Estate 4th Write short story prize has been established to find “fresh compelling writing” by Bame writers. This year’s Joffe Books Prize, one of the UK’s largest literary prizes, is open to unagented crime fiction writers from black, Asian, indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds.
And Māori and Pasifika writers? In last year’s Janet Frame Memorial Lecture, Ihimaera quoted Katherine Mansfield: “I want, for one moment, to make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the Old World.”
But whereas Mansfield fixed her gaze on the English tradition of the “Old World”, Ihimaera (Te Whānau-a-Kai, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou, Tūhoe) says in an email, “My footsteps have followed those of Te Rangi Hīroa [author of the extraordinary Vikings of the Sunrise, first published in 1938] into the Pacific and Europe rather than the UK. My opinion is that Pākehā publishers, critics and writers still look for their affirmation of how good they are from the UK; Māori writers look to the Pacific and US [First Nations].”
Staking their claim
Ihimaera is our most translated writer, now read in 15 different languages. He has recently returned from launching his fifth novel translated into French, Bravoures (The Uncle’s Story), now available in France and across French Polynesia.
“I am hopeful that we will build that market further; after all, Hawaiki is in French Polynesia.”
As debates rage over terms like Bame and Bipoc, as debut novels fly off foreign shelves, as New Zealand’s Mataaho Collective brings home the Golden Lion award from this year’s Venice Biennale, there is a more subtle shift driving the growing profile of indigenous artists.
Makereti says that 10 years ago, “the centre of literature was considered ‘over there’, and publishers and readers said whether they would let you in or not. Now, Māori writers are saying, ‘We’re here. We are what we are and we have something to offer’.”
Some of these overseas readers may not understand the story of Aotearoa colonisation or its impact – the subtext, says McCallum, to all Māori writing – “but there is a hunger globally for more fiction from indigenous writers, and that must carry with it some understanding of the trauma indigenous people have faced from colonisation.”
And overseas readers can bring a new approach to indigenous literature, says Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai). “There is less baggage around it. There are fewer preconceptions and apparent knowledge. They are just more open.”
For writers, being on international book publishing circuits – the festivals, the symposia, the intimate readings – is also an opportunity to connect with other indigenous writers. Makereti points to North America, where indigenous writers are experimenting with new hybrid forms of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. “Those conversations, that evolution of form, are happening here.”
Increasingly, writers such as Tibble, Whiti Hereaka, Ruby Solly and Tīhema Baker are breaking new ground in their art forms, using different voices and different genres, bypassing expectations of how Māori experience and culture “should” be portrayed, in some cases having to respond to the success of Alan Duff’s Once Were Warriors, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People and Manawatu’s Auē.
“There’s some people who say we don’t want stories of trauma any more,” says Makereti. “But do we tell young writers that they can’t write about trauma their communities are experiencing? I understand the reasons for this but to me, it is a weird internalised colonialism to say we can’t talk about bad things in case people say bad things about us.”
The expectation that Māori writers do their culture “justice”, she says, is an added pressure. “Would a Pākehā writer be responsible for their entire culture? Would we be saying, ‘Have you represented white people fairly?’ I think as writers, we are always aware of our responsibilities anyway. That is not to say we always get it right but I’m concerned about the idea that there is a right.”
In her introduction to Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, an anthology of 27 short stories by Māori writers, Morris quotes JC Sturm, who, while writing in the 1950s, had to contend with expectations of subject matter, “like kuia taking their mokopuna ‘down to the rocks to collect some kind of kai moana’.”
“We are not trying to say there is one Māori experience or one Māori point of view,” she says. “You might be living in another country, you might have been brought up in another country, you might be an adopted child who has had limited access to certain elements of your whakapapa – we are still Māori and we still have that inheritance.
“The importance now is that multiplicity of voice and diversity of points of view and experience rather than limiting our subject matter to ‘the hāngī and tangi’ story.”
If New Zealand wants to encourage new generations of creative writers to come forward, “writers need to be able to imaginatively engage with any world they choose, whether they’re writing fantasy, crime, sci-fi, historical fiction or urban stories, without someone accusing them of not writing – or being – Māori enough.”
That diversity of voice, whether picked up internationally or not – and most books, especially non-fiction, are not – is still dependent on strong local support for books that tell Māori stories.
“For some time, publishers in New Zealand have been profoundly interested in and supportive of Māori publishing, wanting to publish Māori voices, fiction, non-fiction, poetry,” says Morris. “In children’s books, there’s a phenomenal amount in English and te reo, sometimes bilingual and increasingly now in junior fiction and YA. Huia in particular has been really active in that area of children’s writing and young people’s writing.”
Fostering talent
Initiatives across the country are now promoting and encouraging writing by Māori authors. This year, Te Kaituhi Māori, the ninth branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors, was launched. It is designed to grow the pūtea of Māori writers and writing in Aotearoa. Last year, poet essa may ranapiri won the inaugural Keri Hulme Award at the biennial Pikihuia Awards, established in 1995 by Huia Publishers to foster Māori writing talent.
In 2021, Morris set up Wharerangi, an online hub to help Māori writers access information about publishing opportunities, residencies, grants and competitions.
The Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards now has an Emerging Māori Writer category. Te Waka Taki Kōrero, the Māori Literature Trust, runs a mentoring programme – its goal: E tuhi, taki mai i te ao Māori ki te ao whānui – to take Māori voices to the world.
Te Hā o Ngā Pou Kaituhi, the Māori writers branch of Toi Māori Aotearoa, promotes Māori authors through readings, writing workshops, competitions and festivals.
Te Rau Kotahi Pukapuka Trust, working in conjunction with Auckland University Press, is chipping away at its goal to translate 100 English texts into te reo. Authors on the completed list include Shakespeare, JK Rowling, Dr Seuss, Maya Angelou, Ernest Hemingway and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. As Ihimaera, a trustee and patron for the trust, said, “Paulo Coelho was overcome at the thought of being published in te reo.”
These initiatives, including Creative New Zealand’s Ngā toi Māori and Pacific arts funding pools, are being reflected in our awards. Increasingly, novels, including debut novels, poetry and nonfiction by Māori writers are scooping up the country’s top awards. In 2021, the Ockham shortlist included four books by Māori writers; in 2022 five; in 2023 six.
Of the four Best First Book Awards this year, two – Ruin and Other Stories by Emma Hislop and There’s a Cure for This by Emma Wehipeihana (previously Emma Espiner), are by Māori writers.
“If you look at the Ockhams,” says Makereti, “it used to be – oh, there’s one. Now there’s three, there’s five, because the quality is so high.”
Clocking up reviews and lingering on bestseller lists have been books by Airana Ngarewa (The Bone Tree), Monty Soutar (Kāwai: For Such a Time as This), Ngahuia te Awekotuku (Hine Toa), Lauren Keenan (The Space Between). After the runaway success of Aroha, the top-selling nonfiction title in 2021, and Waitohu, Hinemoa Elder is about to bring out her new book, Wawata.
Less read at home
As Māori and Pasifika writers and publishers celebrate their success, all writers in New Zealand can benefit from these new voices, says Ihimaera.
“I don’t write now, in my current incarnation, for this country or that country. I write for the future, which is an ‘undiscovered’ country, a play on Mansfield’s in her generation, altogether. I like to think that New Zealand writers are learning through Māori and Pasifika writers how to better read themselves, which is different from their reading into indigenous international work – and probably more crucial to New Zealand’s evolution.”
It is now contingent on readers reading the books that are out there.
“Publishers put out fantastic books across the board,” says Morris. “But we as New Zealand readers don’t support local fiction the way Australians support their own books – about 50% of fiction sold in Australia is Australian fiction.” (Here, it’s 7%.)
“Reading and discussing books that are out there is a crucial first step. There is no point in bringing out books when we sell a few hundred copies – it is too hard for our publishers. The quality is there, as our book awards show. All of us, Māori and tauiwi, need to buy or borrow these books.”