One thing I love about Ōtautahi's literary festival, WORD Christchurch, is that it offers so many free events as part of its programme. One such was a session at our very own Tūranga with novelist, and now Christchurch resident, Tina Makereti, ably intro-ed and gently prodded with questions by former festival director and author, Nic Low.
I have not yet read Makereti's latest novel, The Mires. I say "yet" because based on this session it sounds like a cracker.
The novel is set in the near future and is focused on three families in the same neighbourhood - one Māori, one refugee, one Pākehā - and the connections and friendships between them, particularly the mothers of the three whānau. Janet, the Pākehā mother is described by Makereti as "an old white lady with lots of opinions... I grew up with a lot of Janets" she says, to laughter from the audience. In the course of the story Janet's son Conor returns home and has undergone some kind of change, but something is not right with him, which becomes clear later.
The refugee whānau have been displaced from their European home by an unspecified ecological devastation, the vagueness of which was intentional on Makereti's part:
"It didn't feel right to choose someone's trauma and make it part of my story."
Instead she leaves this open, and as she points out, we could all be victims of this kind of event.
Low wonders about the friendships between the women and the very specific thing that is becoming friends as adults, particularly with people from different backgrounds. Makereti says that she drew on her own experience of living in different places, the tendency to come together around your children. It can certainly be hard moving to a new place, being the odd one out - that you have to try harder because you're not so "smug and comfortable" as the people who already live there. In the novel, Keri, the mother of the Māori family, has been living in Australia for 12 years so there's a commonality of displacement between her and Sera, the mother of the refugee family. Makereti, who says she grew up "displaced" in her own country and her own whānau, has always related to immigrant stories. The character of Janet however "doesn't question her place at all... but it's shallow ground and she doesn't know that".
Makereti then reads from the beginning of the book, a lyrical manifesto of the personification of the Swamp, an omniscient voice that Makereti later refers to as "The Swamp Mother". The Swamp, we are told, is connected to all the water on Earth. The Swamp knows much and "doesn't forget", and it scoffs at our impermanent human constructs of concrete and wood "reclaiming the land with our wet" via earthquakes, and running "beneath everything even though you pretend we no longer exist". As an Ōtautahian I feel called out. Damn Swamp, being right about things. This flows (like swamp waters?) into another passage about Keri giving birth to her first child, Wairere. In each case the language, as described by Low is "rich and evocative".
Low asks about the birth scene as the entry into the story and Makereti explains that one of the early titles for the novel was "Chronicle of the lost children" as there are three babies who are all lost in some way, either displaced, or in the case of Conor lost from their sense of self.
Low then asks what the connection is with te repo (the swamp) to which Makereti prefaces by saying she's going to go in a "weird direction" with her answer. She was writing, she says, during a time when she was concerned about New Zealand not taking enough refugees, and about terrorism and white supremacy prior to 15 March 2019 and the mosque terror attacks. Once that happened though she realised she'd have to write about those ideas in a different way. It forced her to "go deeper and quieter". She was forced to think about it for longer. And she realised that despite very big things happening the story has to be about relationships. At this point she references several novels that she read that exemplify this idea; 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, and Little fires everywhere by Celeste Ng.
The genesis was also in walking the dog in the wetlands and the things she would see and hear; frogsong, a matuku (bittern) eating an eel, and walking around in nature during her Michael King residency. The swamp, she says, woke up.
"The Swamp Mother arrived. I'm always happy when something I'm not actually in control of takes over a book."
It was while she was at Paraparaumu and reading Treaty tribunal reports about the local landscape as it was that she realised that it was all originally swamp, 99% of which is now gone - that "we've just built over it". Another reason for Swamp Mother to become the omniscient voice of the novel.
Makereti says that she likes to have a "source" for such voices. In an earlier novel, Where the Rekohu bone sings, the voice was waking her up in the night "tap, tap, tap", and in The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke she has him recounting his story to his ancestors because she needed him to be telling this life to someone - "...every character has to be real - They don't really work unless I believe in them".
Low wonders how Makereti got on embodying a character like Conor - young, disaffected, and... a white supremacist? The embarrassing thing, she says, is that it wasn't that hard [to get into his head]. Perhaps because we're all swimming in it? Fortunately she also had the work of other writers who have investigated this so she didn't have to go to the darker corners of the internet herself to see firsthand what those places are like. Conor finds a sense of belonging in these groups and Makereti feels that some of the problems of race in New Zealand come down to Pākehā not having a sense of their own culture to hold onto.
Of Janet, Conor's mother, Makereti describes her as "an old school Kiwi New Zealander". Makereti remembers what it was like in the 70s and 80s when "it was okay to be a complete misogynist and racist". And that Janet, who probably doesn't think of herself as racist, comes from that environment. She's someone who thinks "I didn't know. I thought it was just 'common sense'". She's not really using racist words but she still has those "underlying assumptions" about people. In some ways she was a difficult character because Makereti needed people to empathise were her to some degree since they need to be there for her journey.
Unfortunately inspiration came easily as Makereti admits that her own father was "blatantly racist" at times - "Pākehā people can marry Māori people and still be racist". This elicits a bit of what might be nervous laughter?
Seeing so much casual racism then seeing the terrorism of the 15 March mosque attacks prompted Makereti to think about these things as part of the same thing. "Connections," she says "were made".
Makereti is drawn into discussion about the character of Keri's daughter, Wairere, who has a special sensitivity. Makereti says Wairere is representative of people who have a "wider awareness" though the exact nature of this in the character is her own invention, there are definitely people like that and she feels that young people now are much more aware generally.
Low points out that this would seem to contradict the narrative of young people being constantly on their phones and Makereti says that this isn't her view, "they're so staunch... they know so much, they're so connected". Though she admits that's she's lucky as she has "the most special kids in the world". The other mothers in the audience (swamp or otherwise) agree to disagree. "I would definitely give the vote to 16 year-olds," she says.
With the novel being set in the near future (and the Q and A portion of the session hoving into view), Low wonders, "how do you feel about the future... in 3 minutes?"
Makereti admits that she often doesn't feel hopeful but "literature gives up hope". It's all about people "he tangata, he tangata, he tangata... we know that" but also "we're screwed if we don't pay attention to our natural world. Then she and Low get into a discussion about Mana Wāhine and how he feels that's a big part of The Mires, and Makereti expresses surprise that she hasn't written that before, presumably because it's really important to her, and she's so moved she starts to tear up.
Now I'm crying... so good session, everyone.
Ultimately she thinks that some of us probably need to "step aside - let's see who's really going to get us out of this mess".
The questions from the audience were, I'm happy to say, all good ones, probing for a little more, for an expansion on ideas already touched on.
Someone wanted to know why she'd set the book in the near future? This was because she wanted to have a family that was escaping from ecological devastation and in a way was just projecting a little way ahead to when she thought seemed plausible. In her mind the book is set around 2030 or so. When she was writing, in the summer of 2022 she couldn't keep up with the present moment - all the things were happening already. The occupation of parliament grounds was happening and it seemed that extremism had already become normal. "The future", Low snarks, "isn't what it used to be".
Someone else asks about the character of Keri, a single mum struggling to make ends meet. To this Makereti admits that she has been in that situation and "that story hasn't been told a lot in our literature". As a single mother working part-time "life was always like that" on a knife edge. Referencing the circumstances of former Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei's departure from parliament she says "we were all doing that - finding ways to make ends meet" and went on to explain how the increasingly draconian welfare system will require you to fill in forms. There's just "continous paperwork stuff" and at any time that can fall down. Slip up once and suddenly you're trying to figure out how to feed yourself and your children on no money for however many weeks until it gets sorted out.
"I don't give people a lecture in the book like I am right now but that's what Keri's going through. I promise this book isn't just me giving lectures... that's what I do at home."
This audience doesn't seem to mind though. I think Makereti might be preaching (or lecturing) to the converted.
The topic of hope comes up again (perhaps we need it a bit now?) and what keeps her hopeful for the future?
For Makereti it boils down to:
- Young people - "I really think we need to get out of the way of the young people"
- Art - "We're human. We tell stories."
Another question draws on Makereti's experience as both Māori and Pākeha in the form the mother of a Māori/Pākehā child - how do you hold both parts of yourself and does she have any advice for parents raising bicultural children? Makereti admits that it's been a "fractious journey" for her. Certainly trying to choose just one doesn't work (because she's tried) so you have to let the two sides of yourself be. You can't reject parts of yourself, Māori or Pākehā, and she's comfortable talking about this personal topic because it just so happens she has a book of essays coming out next year (in April) about this. But keep open, keep learning, keep taking your child to things. Learning te reo Māori is a good way forward because the language helps you understand the culture.
More WORD Christchurch
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