The Latest Missing Genre in Fiction Books

Ellie Warahi with her “favourite book ever”, Aue by Becky Manawatu.

Fiction novels are constantly evolving and taking on new influences. Internet trends have completely transformed fiction and there’s constantly new tropes and niches being fleshed out. But if you look close enough into the realm of fiction, just beyond the colossal amounts of vampire fantasy and enemies-to-lovers romance novels, you’ll see a decidedly large gap where Māori fiction books should be.

While there’s plenty of Te Reo picture books stampeding into bookstores and schools, it’s close relative in fiction, particularly that of young adult and adult novels, remains hidden.

UC Māori Law Society President and avid book reader, Ellie Warahi, has a lot to say on the topic.

At 20, Warahi grew up before Māori was really taught in most New Zealand schools. The books she does remember “were not interesting […] it was just basic; they weren’t imaginative and the drawings were always creepy.”

But these books were always ones she had to find herself, “the teachers never read them to us,” says Warahi. “It was just stuff that I had found in the library on my own with one of my other friends who was Cook-Islander Māori.” There was nothing in full Te Reo, “they either had a mix of English and Te Reo or side by side.”

As she grew older, finding Māori books was just as difficult.

At Warahi’s Christchurch high school, there was no Māori section at the library, “We didn’t have a dedicated section like there is here [at UC].” She took Te Reo in highschool, where they read “educational, classroom collection books with just basic stories and there wasn’t anything else [...] I don't think we were ever taught about Māori or Pasifika writers or anything at high school.”

Now with the influx of Te Reo and Māori children’s’ books into libraries and bookstores, kids across the country are able to read more of the books that Warahi wished she could have at their age.

Even outside of just education providers, other professions working with kiwi kids are putting more measures in place to further integrate Māori into education. Third-year Speech and Language Pathology student Katie Arnold, 20, completes placements at primary schools across Christchurch as part of her degree. She says they “always ask what language they speak at home and [see how] we can incorporate that into our sessions.” In terms of Māori children’s’ books, she thinks it “depends on what school you’re at, to be honest.”

At her most recent placement, Arnold notes a display of the ‘Best Books of the Year for Young Readers’ set up in the staff room. The books consisted of some that Warahi had mentioned like Witi Ihimaera, but also featured work from other Māori authors like Tim Tipenes’ Pipi and Pou, and Mat Taits’ Te Wehenga: The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

Warahi attributes the increasing amounts of Māori and Te Reo children’s’ books to New Zealand authors Gavin Bishop and Chris Winitana.

“Gavin Bishop and Chris Winitana create fantastic Māori books that don’t have creepy illustrations and they tell really in-depth, formative stories about the culture, which is really nice because they go further than just ‘these were the gods, and this is how it was created’.”

“They tell them accurately or they tell them with more imagination, which has been really cool and they are more advanced picture books, they have a lot of text in them.”

Children’s’ books from authors Gavin Bishop and Chris Winitana.

Yet while Māori children’s books are gaining traction, the same cannot be said for teen, young adult and even adult Māori fiction books.

There’s a wide and gaping space within the fiction genre for Māori books, and even for prolific readers like Warahi, it’s a struggle to find fictional Māori books for more advanced readers.

“I honestly don't find a lot. I find more that will talk about concepts, but it’s just super limited,” said Warahi.

It’s not that Māori fiction books don’t exist. They do, there’s just not many of them and the ones that are published aren’t in the mainstream for the most part. Warahi sources her Māori fiction from other Māori, but it's “still quite limited, it’s usually lecturers or other adults. I find a lot of people our age don’t read a lot and if they do, a lot of them aren’t Te Reo speakers.”

Since the re-release of movies translated into Te Reo like Moana, The Lion King, Coco and Frozen, Warahi believes there would be demand for more advanced movies to be translated. She and her fellow Māori speakers “love nostalgia and we enjoy it, but it’s kind of all that’s offered to us so we’ll take what we can get.”

She believes there’s been a shift in interest in Māori literature with the introduction of more Te Reo movies. “They’re watching it and asking ‘what can I read?’, ‘what else can I do?’, so I think that’s definitely influenced [Māori literature].”

Mainstream bookseller Paper Plus has a specific “Māoridom” section on their website, categorised into Art & Culture, General, History and Te Reo Māori. Whitcoulls has a “Māoritanga” section, however it’s just educational language or history books. Scorpio books fares better, having a specific online “New Zealand Fiction” section that contains almost as many Māori-influenced books as it does Pakeha.

New Zealand publishers like Huia Publishers, Aotearoa Publishers and Makaro Press collectively boast hundreds of Māori books, both in Te Reo and English. Yet out of those, only a few have made it into physical bookstores, notably Aue by Becky Manawatu from Makaro Press collecting a small bounty of awards.

Warahi points out that the issue with a lot of the Māori books that end up in mainstream bookstores are either educational, historical or just cover concepts. She said, “Finding ones that interest you that are also in Te Reo is really, really hard.” There’s now limits imposed on people wanting to read in Te Reo, with minimal numbers of books available for those who aren’t yet fluent but are well past reading Te Reo picture books.

“There’s so many that are just telling stories of creation and our past, which is really interesting and good to learn, but there’s definitely a gap where there can be more fantasy and sci-fi,” she said.

“There’s only so many books I want to read on how we settled. I want to read some, I don’t know, an abstract space book or a romance! There’s just nothing.”

Even libraries across the country really only carry the classics in the Māori fiction genre from the likes of Alan Duff, Keri Hulme and Witi Ihimaera. The resolve for an issue as deeply rooted as this is unclear.

Outsourcing books from New Zealand publishers, while practically inefficient, leaves room for more choices in Māori fiction. Relying on major booksellers to bring Māori fiction into the mainstream is futile and frustrating. But as this generation of kids who have now grown-up reading Te Reo children’ books grows up, the demand for more advanced novels will surge.

In the meantime, at least there’s some stellar Māori fiction books out there to bridge the gap a little more.