A CELEBRATION OF RECENT MĀORI AND PASIFIKA BOOKS
Alongside the dancing, food and festivities at Auckland’s iconic Pasifika Festival this year were more than a few good books. The 90-plus titles featured in
The Coalition for Books’ Pasifika Books and Māori Books | Ngā Pukapuka Māori catalogues were out on display and for sale. The idea was to take books to communities in places outside the usual settings — and the crowds of people at Pasifika were on board. Attendees browsed and bought a huge range of books from On Call, Samoan-new Zealand surgeon Ineke Meredith’s sharply observed memoir, which opens the doors to the operating theatre and the writer’s life, to bilingual picture book Rere Atu Taku Poi! Let My Poi Fly a story about gender fluidity, self-expression, cultural pride and having the courage to do what you love by poi expert and lecturer Tangaroa Paul, who identifies as gender fluid.
It's the second year The
Coalition for Books has had a physical presence at Pasifika alongside the Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop. Since 2020, The Coalition has collaborated with publishers and writers from around the motu to gather an annual showcase of Māori and Pasifika books. The global pandemic in the first few years meant these were online only, promoted digitally via our
Kete Books website. These catalogues have grown each year with the number and range of books submitted. In 2024, the catalogues bring together recent and forthcoming books from 22 different publishers, reflecting the strength of
Māori and Pasifika writing and publishing and the appetite of readers to engage with these works. The two catalogues produced this year are packed with titles by Māori and Pasifika writers, illustrators, editors and translators and a few books on Māori or Pasifika themes or topics by non-māori or Pasifika contributors too.
Featured titles in Pasifika Books 2024 include the new eviscerating and consoling poetry collection from Tusiata Avia, Big Fat Brown Bitch (read Avia's poem 'Ode: don't punish the wealthy' here), Selina Tusitala Marsh's Mophead workbook Wot Knot You Got?, and A Canoe Before the Wind, the memoir by Aotearoa's first Samoan Police Commander Vitale Lafaele.
Publisher and author Dahlia Malaeulu's bilingual books for children are also present.
Malaeulu has collaborated with Mele Tonga-grant, Inangaro Vakaafi and Sale and Selina Alefosio to create Tongan, Niuean and Tokelauan editions of the Mila's My Pasifika series titles. Malaeulu's collection of perspectives from Pasifika families living with autism spectrum disorder, vāsifika, also features. Other titles include Gina Cole's Na Viro, a Pasifika Futurism novel (a genre Cole has defined), Pacific Arts Aotearoa, edited by Lana Lopesi, tells the story of the legacy of Pacific Arts in Aotearoa, giving artists' perspectives and Damon Salesa's essays on the histories of our Pacific World, An Indigenous Ocean.
The Māori Books | Ngā Pukapuka Māori 2024 catalogue is in both English and te reo Māori. Featured adult fiction includes Airana Ngarewa's best-selling The
Bone Tree (reviewed on Kete here) and Patricia Grace's new collection The Bird Child and Other Stories. In her review of The Bird Child for Kete, Jade Kake writes the stories are "rich and immensely readable". She also writes about Grace's use of te reo Māori and the importance of this in the normalisation and reclamation of the language. Kake's own work is present in
the catalogue. Her 'organic and conversational' tribute to the late architect Rewi Thompson, co-written with Jeremy Hansen, features as does her novel Checkerboard Hill, a debut Vaughan Rapatahana has described as "impressive' and 'painted as much as penned".
Te Awa o Kupu, Hiwa and Huia Short Stories 15 are among the poetry and short stories collections. Koe, a forthcoming anthology of environmentally themed poems selected by Janet Newman and Robert Sullivan, is here too. Books for kaipānui tamariki or younger readers include Deborah Robertson's novel Before George, set against the backdrop of the Tangiwai disaster and Tim Tipene's Te Pukapuka ka Kore e Pānuihia (The Book that Wouldn't Read), which has design elements to appeal to reluctant or dyslexic readers.
There is a rich set of nonfiction titles too, from books on art and arts practice like
Ngā Kaihanga Uku: Māori Clay Artists to collections of writing like Ngā Kupu Wero edited by Witi Ihimaera to books like Hira Nathan's Whakawhetai Gratitude.
It's likely that one of the non-fiction titles in these two catalogues will be this year's General Non-fiction Award Winner at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
An Indigenous Ocean, Ngātokimatawhaorua, and There's a Cure for This are three of the four books shortlisted.
You have to imagine that there might be a book for every reading interest in Pasifika Books 2024 and Māori Books Ngā Pukapuka Māori 2024. |
Printable versions are available here and here.