Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore), who has just released her third novel, says she’s been thinking a lot about why Māori writing is gaining international interest.
She believes it’s because Māori have something to offer and always have had but that this is the moment where people are noticing more that Māori stories are universal.
She says people can access Māori stories and find a different way of thinking about things that are impacting them too. She points to the general population being confronted with things indigenous people have been experiencing and concerned about for a long time, such as genocide and ecological devastation.
People are struggling to survive, she says, and are looking at what indigenous people have been doing and how they take care of each other and have gone through different stages of survival and flourishing.
“That’s my working theory but our stories are just epic, our stories are just so cool so I think that’s the other thing - people are always looking for good stories.”
Makereti’s third novel, The Mires, is narrated by an omniscient swamp mother and zooms closely into the different characters’ perspectives.
“I think it’s important to have that roving perspective,” Makereti says, “so we could get a sense of the way different people exist in the world”.
The characters include single mother Keri, Wairere her matakite daughter, the Pākehā neighbour Janet and her son Conor who becomes radicalised into racial extremism, and finally Sera, a climate refugee.
The book developed over time. Makereti says she doesn’t intentionally write big themes like climate change and racist extremism but that she tends to end up doing so as they occupy her mind.
Makereti teaches creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
Her other novels are The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke and Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings. In 2016 she won the Pacific region Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Black Milk.
She also co-edited Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology that celebrates Māori and Pasifika writing, with Witi Ihimaera.
The Mires is being published by Ultimo Press in Aotearoa and Australia. It will be published in the US next July by HarperVia, which is dedicated to publishing international voices.
Casual racism and extremism
Makareti says she spent three years thinking, observing what had been happening in Aotearoa and overseas and wondering whether there was a possibility a terrorist attack could happen here.
Some of that time she was thinking about some of the Pākehā she grew up with because a lot of her upbringing was in a Pākehā family and how in New Zealand so-called casual racism is normalised and the two are connected, she says.
This was before the terrorist attack in 2019 and, when the mosque shootings happened, she said it was heartbreaking and it changed the way she thought about the book.
The book also features a climate refugee family “because it isn’t just Māori who experience racism in New Zealand”. Makereti notes Aotearoa doesn’t let many refugees into the country and could offer more manaakitanga.
Initially, they weren’t climate refugees but Makereti didn’t want to take one particular culture’s story, saying the reality of displacement by climate change is something everyone will face at some point.
Asked if it is difficult writing from the perspective of a racist character, Makareti reveals she was actually shocked how easy it was.
“Partly that’s cos we live with it... these racist attitudes are everywhere in our culture. The extremism is too familiar.”
Makereti said she learned a lot from writing the character. She didn’t understand extremism or racism until she went to him as a character asking, “Why are you behaving this way? What is this about? What are you getting out of this?”
“Conor is looking for belonging. He’s a lost soul, coming out of a Pākehā culture that’s eradicated its own culture, so he feels groundless, doesn’t have anything to cling to.”
Single motherhood
The single motherhood aspect of the story was inspired by her own struggle as a single mother.
“I was no longer a single mother, I had a great partner, but sometimes when you come out of a situation like that, that’s when you have the opportunity to reflect on it.”
She thought about all the other single mums and dads and what isolation does to single parents and their children.
“I don’t see that a lot in our literature. It was also just a story I always wanted to tell. The children in the book were really inspired by my own kids and the way children can show you stuff that you’re not aware of.”
The swamps and wetlands
“This book was a time of me paying attention to the swamp,” as she set the story in Paraparaumu Beach where she lives on the Kāpiti coast. “This book taught me how to love, support and enjoy the wetlands and swamps.”
“I was probably like everyone else, they were just there or not there because we’ve eradicated 99% of them and built our cities over them.
However, she says writing forces writers to pay better attention to the world around them, so she would walk to the swamps every day with her dog and she started to see how incredible they are.
The wetlands prevent floods, clean the water and purify the air. “They look after us, so it’s time we look after them.”