The woman who read Auckland
Janet McAllister visits Pakuranga and Te Matariki Clendon libraries
Instead of sharing a suburb, this week’s libraries are those that nearly killed me with scary commutes. Cycling south of Wiri to Clendon, an inadequate bike path dumped me into 60kmh traffic. Cycling east to Pakuranga, I didn’t attempt to survive legal travel over the Tamaki River but rode bumpily on the skateboard-thin footpath instead. I had to be an Extreme Librarier practicing Extreme Librarying.
Was it worth it? At first, in Pakuranga, I wasn’t sure. From the shopping plaza carpark, the library wall is downright ugly, buttercreamblank. But then, conservative Pakuranga doesn’t do showy. Perhaps the 1995 library is deliberately walk-shoes sensible. It’s nonthreatening, unpretentious.
However! Things perk up inside, by the light of the spine skylight, if you overlook the carpet’s 50 shades of grey. The crime section shows two crows captioned “attempted murder” (geddit?). Book shelves sport Maori sayings like “Te tapaepae o te rangi”: “See the place where the sky reaches down” (in other words, reach for the stars).
A paper-bag rata vine creeps along the kids shelves, its leaves offering “reading challenges”: read a book with an animal on the cover; read a book with dragons in it; read an ancient classic from your grandparents’ olden days. The Hobbit might just tick off all those leaves at once. (Do dragons count as animals?)
But the library’s pearl is three wall-hanging quilts, lozenges of deep blues and rich reds, pinks and purples. Created by Dr Gwen Wanigasekera, the colours of this artwork, “Na te tuhi rapa a Manawatere ka kitea”, partially refer to Pakuranga rahihi, the local “battle of the sun’s rays”, won with a supernaturally early sunrise. Stunning.
Opened in 2006 with a barbecue celebration of 700 sausages, Te Matariki Clendon Library is like Pakuranga’s turned inside-out. That is, its glass and polished concrete exterior (offering stylised waka paddles by Dion Hitchens and Charles Koroneho) is beautiful but its interior, framing an average metal staircase, could be cosier (the exception is a well-carpeted lowceilinged nook for teenagers).
But Te Matariki serves its community extremely well; it is joined to a leisure centre and possibly offers more activities than any other Super City library, from an after-school kids club to ukulele jam sessions to “Pasifika tea and topics” to careers advice to “Gamer Friday” and so on.
This service is as it should be. The suburb is severely deprived and the library hit the headlines last year because kids were being dropped off for the day without supervision or anything to eat. Such desperation is our collective shame.
On happier days, people create and record their own music at Te Matariki. In a wonderful 2015 Herald interview, digital outreach librarian Baruk Jacob said he was disappointed that “the kids were too whakamaa (shy) to share [their music]. They’d spend hours practicing and recording music and then just delete it”.
But he said the music makerspace has cut the library’s graffiti problem enormously; this suggests the rangatahi feel less frustrated. Next steps: te tapaepae o te rangi.