Esteemed Maori writer guest at festival
One of New Zealand’s most celebrated writers, Witi Ihimaera, is opening Page & Blackmore’s Readers and Writers at this year’s Nelson Arts Festival.
Witi Ihimaera will be reading and talking about his work, particularly his most recent book, Maori Boy: A Memoir of Childhood on Friday October 14. Maori Boy was the winner of this year’s general non-fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It provides a profound insight into Ihimaera’s childhood and the East Coast village of Waituhi, the setting for many of his novels.
Ihimaera’s much-loved books include The Matriarch, The Whale Rider, the inspiration for the 2002 international film success and Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies, made into the film Mahana, released this year.
For a writer who has frequently fictionalised his life story, Ihimaera’s latest work is a profound shift into the unguarded realm of memoir. Maori Boy isn’t just about him, though, but a Maori story that draws on oral traditions about the Turanganui-a-Kiwa region where he was brought up, 21 km north-west of Gisborne, giving a sense of what life was like on the East Coast in the 1940s and 50s.
Packed with fascinating stories about those formative years, the memoir is divided into sections covering the tupuna (ancestors), whakapapa (genealogy), Gisborne and Ihimaera’s sense of finding his turangawaewae (standing and connection to a place). Speaking of this first volume of his autobiography, Ihimaera has said that the writing forced him to confront some life changing events in his early life. It’s not a misery memoir, though.
Born Witi Tame Smiler in Gisborne in 1944, Witi Ihimaera became the first person of Maori descent to publish both a novel and a book of short stories.
His iwi is Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki, but he has close affiliations to Tuhoe, Te Whanau-a-Apanui, Ngati Kahungunu, and Ngai Tamanuhiri, and links to Rongowhakaata, Ngati Porou, and Te Whakatohea. Ihimaera has talked about the significance of his iwi and its influence on his writing and how he feels the world he lives in is Maori rather than European.
When receiving the premiere Maori arts award Te Tohutiketike a Te Waka Toi at the 2009 Creative New Zealand Te Waka Toi Awards he commented that to be given such a cultural honour was a recognition of his people and how he would have nothing to write about without them, and so ‘‘there would be no Ihimaera.’’
Before being a published author, Ihimaera worked in a number of careers, including a cadet journalist with The Gisborne Herald and postman.
In 1968 he shifted to the Post Office in Wellington where he studied part-time at Victoria University, completing his BA in 1971. He later worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, taking him to Canberra, New York and Washington working at the New Zealand High Commission.
In 1990 Ihimaera was professor and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Maori Literature at the University of Auckland, retiring in 2010. Ihimaera now writes for six months of the year and teaches creative writing at Auckland’s Manukau Institute of Technology.