Aotearoa Book Shelf Salon: Elisapeta Heta, Shilo Kino, Becky Manawatu and Rebecca K Reilly with Alice Te Punga Somerville

Aotearoa Book Shelf Salon is a conversation about books and how they shape us as individuals but also as a collective. In lieu of a live event (thanks Covid), we have this brilliant Q & A with questions by Alice Te Punga Somerville and answers by four fantastic Aotearoa writers.

Question 1:
Our in-person session was going to be called 'Aotearoa's Book Shelf.' Shelves may be where books are shelved, but they're not usually where we read. Where do you usually read? Do you have a favourite location? Are there different reading spots for different kinds of books? 

Elisapeta: The desire to read, and where it happens, doesn’t have much rhyme or reason in my universe. Particularly at the moment, in this (seemingly) perpetual lockdown, I can roll from a spot outside (my fav orange chair), to the couch, to my bed depending on how deeply entangled I am with the words/worlds I’m reading about.

Becky: Mostly I like reading in bed while hogging the pillows. At the Waimangaroa and Mokihinui River mouths are other favourite places of mine to read. I love reading with my family. To be honest my daughter’s the only big reader in the family and I enjoy reading beside her. The Otago University library is a beautiful place to read as well.

Shilo: My favourite place to read is Piha. I love taking a blanket and snacks and my kindle and reading in front of Lion Rock. It’s quiet and moody and feels worlds away even though it’s only half an hour drive from my house. If I can’t get to Piha, I read from my bed.

Rebecca: I find it hard to concentrate on reading if I’m in the house, I need to sit on a proper chair or at a desk and I don’t have these things. For this reason, I often take my book to the library or university to get reading done but we aren’t allowed to do that right now, so I read on my doorstep. If it’s not raining and it’s not too hot and the neighbours aren’t outside.
 

Question 2: What books have gotten you through lockdowns? 

Elisapeta: I’m such a literary grazer, I pick books up and put them down… but live in too small a whare for them to stay that way for too long so they often get put back on the shelf, always partially ingested. Or maybe social media has just shortened my attention span? Ha! That said, and in no particular order the books that jump to my mind are: How To Get Over A Boy by Chidera Eggerue (it’s a continuous gut punch of realisations, ah ha moments, and the odd tear…), A Bath full of Kawakawa and Hot water, is by my bed for a reason. I like to read poetry and, when I have the space for it, write or paint in a kind of response, so really… every poetry book is getting me through these lockdowns.

Becky: I can’t be sure which ones exactly were my lockdown reads but some of the books I have read this year were The life of Pi by Yann Martell, Paradise by Toni Morrison, Dirt Music by Tim Winton, Baby No-Eyes and From the Centre – A writer’s Life, both by Patricia Grace, Rebecca’s dazzling Greta & Valdin (read my review at Pantograph Punch lol), Atonement by Ian McEwan, and Aroha by Dr Hinemoa Elder, has been one I dip into to try stop myself being overwhelmed by negativity.

Shilo:  This year I’ve been  immersed in te ao Māori and haven’t really had the mental space to read much else. Most of the pukapuka I’ve read has either been about tikanga, the reo or our history and it has been rongoa- medicine for my soul. Books such as Aroha by Dr Hinemoa Elder, He Iti te Kupu: Maori Metaphors and Similes by Hona Black, Tikanga Maori: Living by Maori Values by Hirini Moko Mead.  Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly is a book I read recently and it was refreshing to read about urban Māori takatāpuhi living in the city. It really is one the best books I’ve read this year! (I just realized that Rebecca is part of this kōrero too which is rawe)! Super funny and relatable story.  Loved it. 

Rebecca: Kia ora, lol. I’m so bad at reading in lockdowns! I just can’t concentrate on anything except datasets and news articles. Last year I didn’t read (or write) anything at all and this year I just finished my first book of the lockdown after three months, which was She’s a Killer. I’m looking forward to reading From the Centre as well, which is in transit between libraries for me at the moment. I like when I get to read other people’s manuscripts that are heading towards publication, it makes me feel like things will eventually change and start happening again. I always need something to look forward to. 

Question 3: Who's a writer you really wish would write another book? 

Elisapeta: I’m with Shilo on this, there’s so much mātauranga Māori I’m hungry for. But equally, I’d love some Māori or Moana-nui sci-fi, or fantasy reads. I feel like if I could mash up the intelligence of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell with a fully Indigenous, wahine centred story line crossing indigenous tā/vā/wā I’d have all my nerd centres totally humming. Ooh, but I’d love more from Dr Ngāhuia Murphy, and actually just more wāhine from around Aotearoa, there are some amazing bodies of research stuck in the archives of musty old university online portals that need a graphic designer and some love.

Becky: I’d be quick to grab anything new out by Apirana Taylor, I loved Five Strings. There are writers with books in the pipeline I’m really excited about such as Talia Marshall’s memoir. There is an award-winning poet working on a novel too, and I think its going to be a beautiful book. I won’t name her as she might be shy about it and just want to work away quietly and surprise as all with her brilliance haha! I can’t wait for another book from Tina Makareti. Definitely be grabbing the next books from Rebecca and Shilo! Internationally if Fernanda Melchor (author of Hurricane Season) gets another one out, I’ll be really interested, also Arundhati Roy.  

Shilo: There is so much Mātauranga Māori I want to learn so I would love for Professor Rangi Matamua to write more books. I loved his Matariki book, I remember the whole of Takuira (where I went to school this year) read his book like a bible because we had to do a 20 minute speech on Māori new year and it was this new and amazing Mātauranga we didn’t know about before.  Rikki Solomon hasn’t written a book yet but I would love for him to write about the Maramataka. I’m also keen to read Rebecca’s next pukapuka! 

Rebecca: I think it’s a privilege but at the same time a frustrating thing being a writer and knowing so many other writers, because you always hear rumours of new books, especially second books, sometimes years before they appear in the world, if at all. I think 2023 or 2024, if they go ahead, will be really big years for exciting novels in this country. I heard Becky read new work (if I am right) at Ngā Oro Hou this year and I’m excited to see where that goes. I’m excited for first books, I want to read Talia Marshall’s essay collection too, as well as a book from Kōtuku Titihuia that I hope is coming one day, and J Wiremu Kane’s prospective novel about middle-class Māori with queer and disabled characters.

Question 4: Next year the new NZ history curriculum will be rolled out across our schools and kura. Meanwhile, in the context of vaccinations, there has been quite a bit of chatter about requiring teachers to do things. Can you tell us about a book (or couple of books) you reckon would be great required reading for all teachers who are getting their heads around the new curriculum? - perhaps books that will affirm those who know and inform those who don't?    

Elisapeta: There’s no way to answer this question better than the excellent suggestions Becky and Shilo have already shared! Patricia Grace (Baby No-Eyes, and Cousins) as well as The Matriarch and Dream Swimmer by Witi Ihimaera were pivotal Māori texts by Māori, about Māori that I read as a teenager. I think reading those texts was the first time I had felt as though elements of my world were finally being reflected back to me, and looking back too, made me realise the extremity of the contrast between what I was being fed in the curriculum and just how white it all was, versus what my life and experience actually was and that I had tapped into this tiny universe that showed me that. So, in a funny way, I would advocate for all of the books, and all of their genres, that demonstrate all the ways in which we show up in the world as Tangata Whenua, and Tangata Moana. My approach would be to just flood the system with everything we have, currently, and let the kids be exposed to it all so that the multiplicity of their world views is affirmed. It wouldn’t be to centre the educators and what they do, or rather don’t know, there’s too many barriers of bias through that route.

Becky: I agree with Shilo’s recommendations, and I think Pōrangi Boy would be a great text for classrooms. Reading Patricia Grace’s Baby No-Eyes I thought it should be taught in classrooms (I imagine its in classrooms tbh) particularly for its depiction of institutional racism in the healthcare system. Grace’s Cousins would be another excellent book and great as a pairing with the film. 

Here I’m showing myself up as being all about the fiction, and that’s true – that’s me argh. 

I subscribe to activist Tina Ngata’s patreon. She also has heaps of work online. She’s put up her book Kia Mau - Resisting Colonial Fictions on her website, for free (!). 

Back to fiction, I think Black Marks on the White Page has huge reach with so many contemporary established and emerging Indigenous writers published in the book edited by Tina Makareti and Witi Ihimaera.

Shilo: Dawn Raid by Pauline (Vaeluaga) Smith, Bastion Point by​​ Tania Roxborogh and even The Pōrangi Boy would be great texts to include when teaching our tāmariki and rangatahi about our history. I still don’t understand why some schools feel the need to include books like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter in their curriculum when there are resources available that can teach our children about our own historical events. We don’t need to read fictional stories to understand tragedy when it’s happening right here on our whenua. How about a pukapuka about the events of Parihaka? In saying that, it’s not our sole responsibility as Māori writers to educate an entire nation of kids by writing for free and in our spare time on injustices that happened to our own people. Publishers need to commission for these books to be written by Māori writers and work with the Government to do so. Pay Māori writers what they are worth.

Rebecca: I don’t know which books teachers could read to understand Māori history. When I was at school, which wasn’t a hugely long time ago, we had one New Zealand history workbook in Social Studies that had one page for each historical event. I remember one was the Treaty of Waitangi, one was ‘Land Wars’ and one was Refrigeration. Nearly everything I know about our history and about my whakapapa is from hapū Facebook pages and Te Ara: The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. 

I think to understand the significance and ongoing impact of the history being taught, educators should be familiar with issues within te ao Māori as it stands now. People still find it difficult not to perceive us as a homogenous group with totally common interests, goals and ways of living, who are united in how we should achieve these things. But you know, you read one news article about how things went down at a meeting of iwi health providers, or what Winston Peters or Brian Tamaki think about any given issue, or read one comment thread about who can draw marae or have a moko kauae, and you can very easily see that things are not like that at all. I don’t think we should be giving teachers a lot of extra work, and I’m not necessarily recommending that they check out my marae’s Facebook for a very lively debate on who stole the knives from the wharekai, but I think that if you’re going to make your money as an educator of Aotearoa history it’s only responsible to keep yourself up to date with current te ao Māori news and perspectives as our history doesn’t exist independently of these things.

Question 5: This year Shilo Kino has been writing about her experience of learning te reo Māori, and I always remember a conversation about the future of our reo with a wahine who said "I just wish there were romance novels in te reo I could read on the beach." When you think about Aotearoa's future bookshelves - say, twenty years in the future - what kinds of books do you wish for?

Elisapeta: There are some amazing conversations playing out on instagram, right now, that remind me of this kōrero. Tonight, I saw a post from a takatāpui writer who I follow, who’s talking about going to do her masters thesis, to specifically look at research with the intent of writing about pre-colonial conceptions of erotica, sexuality and gender. Te wiki o te reo Māori this year went off on insta with kīwaha about sex, sexuality, intimacy and relationships, with the underlying theme from many being that: languages that thrive are languages that are normal to use in the bedroom, not ‘just’ in formal situations, but everywhere. The pukapuka Aroha by Dr Hinemoa Elder,  to think about our healing, our potential, our trauma and how we have all the tools to work through that in our reo and pūrakau. My hope is that in 20 years time, all this kōrero is so much more normal, that the stories to read are plenty, they’re international, they’re rich in reo and history, joy and laughter… I’m ready to read it.

Becky: I love Octavia Butler’s and Kazuo Ishiguro’s use of science and speculative fiction to examine society in a way only these genre’s can. I’d love to see more Māori writers being published using these genres to debunk the white academic myth that mātauranga Māori Is nOt SCiEncE!

It’s really exciting Historian Dr Monty Soutar is writing a trilogy of historical novels on the impact of colonisation. Our historical novels are heavy on romanticising the extraction industry and settler life.

I will never be able to read in te reo fluently, but in 20 years I might have mokopuna, and if they were reading in te reo I’d wish for every possible reading experience for them, in our reo. I’d sit back in my rocking chair and tell them to read to me in te reo, while the rain pours and the creamed paua’s simmering and I’m drinking my single evening beer lol. Let’s hope for such comforts as books and normal rain and time for connection and kai and the opportunity to still be learning from our history in 20 years.

Ka nui te mihi ki a koe mo te patai Alice. Kia ora e hoa ma.

Shilo: Someone asked me recently if it was my dream to write books in te reo Māori. Growing up, it wasn't a dream because one, I didn't ever think I would ever be able to speak my language and two, I didn’t think there would ever be an audience. But after this year and having a glimpse into te ao Māori, I’m even more hungry for our stories to be told, first in te reo Māori then translated into Pākehā afterwards (rather than the other way around). Te reo Māori has its own mauri. It is vivid and expansive and deep. Our children are growing up in a world much different to how many of us grew up, where te reo Māori is going viral on tikok worldwide and where there are far more of our stories to choose from. 

Steph Matuku put it perfectly when she asked, ‘What makes a Māori story a Māori story, anyway?’ Yes I would love to see romance novels and the light hearted every day stories and at the same time  I want to read about our history and the raw stories that trace back to colonization. I want to read all genres because we are diverse people who have different experiences of what it means to be Māori. In 20 years time, my hope is that our names and stories will be taking up space on bookshelves across the world, in every genre there is.

Rebecca: I agree, I want Māori books to be about everything, for ourselves first and then everyone else. If we had enough books, if we had enough confidence and enough money and enough time to write all the books we want to write, we would be able to have control of our own image. I want to read about all kinds of Māori, ones who are graphic designers or who love going to rooftop bars or who are queer sheep farmers in a bitter rivalry about something. I want there to be so many different pukapuka Māori that we can start writing Māori characters who are terrible people without worrying about how it will affect our image, like pākehā get to do all the time. I don’t want young people growing up thinking that Aotearoa fiction is boring and doesn’t represent them, like I did. And I think that we’re getting there.