Tangi and Whanau

I have spoiled myself with Maori and other Kiwi books over the past few months, wanting to understand the perspective, see the writing styles and learn about Maori customs from a literary stance.

Witi Ihimaera

I have written about my strong emotional reaction to The Bone People, now one of my favorite books of all time. Tangi and Whanau, two novels written by another influential Kiwi writer, Witi Ihimaera, are a good starting point on Maori-themed literature.

Tangi (definition: tears/crying or funeral) and Whanau (definition: family) are connected. Tangi was published first and tells the story of a young man who's lost his father and is realizing the extent of his love for his father and how his passing will affect his life to come. It is an excellent way to be introduced in the world of the Maori people. You live through the emotion of the loss, the customs and traditions of a Tangi and the meaning of what it is to be family.

Though Whanau was published later on, it actually takes place before Tangi, using the same characters, focusing on a wider community rather than on one individual. It shows the trials and tribulations of a community of people, from the same Iwi, and their struggle between the traditional way of life and modern Pakeha (white) ways of living. How the young move away and stop working the land and how the old are holding on to what they know was a sustainable way of life. It is actually a novel that could take place in any land in the sense that indigenous peoples around the world are struggling with these same issues. It is a global dilemna that is often only appreciated after things have gone beyond help.

If you get a chance to read Tangi or Whanau before The Bone People, I think it would help give you a foundation for Maori culture. They are easy and well written reads.

The Bone People

Not 10 minutes have passed since I finished reading "The Bone People" by Keri Hulme, a well-respected Kiwi author.

And it resonates within me. And so I must let it out.

There are moments in your life when something will take hold of you, drawing you in until you can not wait to be immersed in it every time you are separated from it.

Art has a funny way of doing such things.

I had heard of this author several times by several people, Maori and white New Zealander alike. So, being in Wellington now and planning on staying for a few months I joined the public library, figuring it would cost less and be less of a hassle to travel when it came time for me to move on again.

I go through periods of prolific reading and periods of absent escapism, where light-hearted non-heart-involving things are what I need around me.

For the past 5 years or so, I have veered away from what I would consider "real" literature, settling for the escapism-factor I felt I needed. My emotions too sensitive to any kind of pain, I looked for anything else to distract me from the difficulties I was facing in my own life.

Since arriving in New Zealand, I've made a pact with myself. Part of this journey is to open my mind again, hence the mindless jobs I've taken up (to allow my head to think of other things). I'm working the brainmuscles I've let atrophy in the past years and I'm reading art again.

When I first borrowed "The Bone People", I was not ready for it. I began to read and what I saw were words. Just a jumble of large, sometimes incomprehensible (her vocabulary is one of the most extensive I have ever seen) words printed on page after yellowing page. I stopped reading about 30 pages in and went on to read another book.

A few weeks later I picked it up again, determined to give it another chance.

Keri Hulme doesn't give you a book on a platter for you to nibble on while you chat with your friends. No, there is work to be done here. With all great literature, there is work to be done. You cannot open this book and expect to be entertained.

Instead you will be challenged...by the strangeness of the sounds she uses as words, the poetry interspersed with the prose...the omniscient point of view cut criss-crossed and diagonally by first person possessive where you enter the heads of three different people with no warning given and you must do the sorting out. Sometimes I would have to backtrack and reread a few paragraphs before the meaning showed itself to me.

But despite the work put into it, when I opened that book a second time, I stepped into a world that I was loath to leave.

The human condition:

Who am I?

What am I worth?

Where do I fit in, on this earth?

Where is my past and do I belong to it?

What is family and do we deserve each other?

What is love?...what is love...what is love...? How do we define something that is so utterly subjective? How do we find it and how...how do we maintain it?

As I sit here and think of what to write next, a plethora of ideas coming to mind, I think upon how it has changed me...this book...and tears come to my eyes.

We are human...we breath, we hurt, we laugh, we cry...we die. But before we die, we live. It is up to us to decide how we will live.

p.s. There are translations from Te Reo Maori to English at the back of the book with page references. I only realized that after I had finished the book. Use the translations as you go along. It'll add more to the understanding of the culture, the history and the people.