Potiki

Potiki is a novel by New Zealand author

In 1985, Patricia Grace received a writing fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington, which enabled her to give up teaching, become a full-time writer, and complete Potiki.^[1][2][3] It was her second novel, following Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps (1978).^[4]

The novel is set in a coastal community resembling Hongoeka, Grace's hometown, which is north of Wellington, New Zealand.^[5][2] Although the characters in the novel are fictional, Grace was influenced by the real-life attempts of private developers to acquire land at Hongoeka since the 1950s.^[2] On her writing process, Grace has said:^[6]

When I started Potiki I thought I was writing a short story. I wrote the story about the carved meeting house, and when I finished that I thought if we have a meeting house there are people who belong to that meeting house. I asked myself who they might be. I started off with one character – that was Roimata – and how she came to be there, in that community. And then her children one by one, and her husband. I didn't know from one chapter to the next what was going to happen – I was just following.

Grace initially wrote the novel in longhand, then "cut it up and stuck it back together with sellotape — the real cut and paste", then typed up the work on a portable typewriter.^[6] On taking up the fellowship at Victoria she had access to a computer and was able to complete the manuscript using it.^[6]

Plot summary

The novel tells the story of a Māori family's attempts to preserve their ancestral land and heritage. The term potiki can mean "youngest child" or "last-born child" in

The book is narrated by different voices, including most notably Toko, his aunt Roimata and his uncle Hemi,[8] and has a non-linear spiral-like structure.^[9] Grace intentionally set the novel out as though it was a whaikōrero (formal speech), following the standard format in Māori oratory: beginning with a chant, then greetings, then telling the story, and at the end finishing with "Ka huri" (sometimes translated as "spread the word" or "over to you", signalling that it is now the turn of the next speaker to tell their story).^[3][10]

The story of Toko reflects that of

The novel was first published overseas by The Women's Press in London in 1987,^[13] and has subsequently been translated into seven languages.^[1][2] It is one of very few New Zealand books, and as of 2021^[update] the only New Zealand book by a Māori author, to be translated into Portuguese.^[14] In 2020, it was re-published as a Penguin Classic in the United Kingdom.^[5][15]

Reception

Potiki was widely praised by reviewers and has received several notable awards. John Beston, writing for

Some critics viewed the novel as a political work; Beston in his Landfall review suggested that "having sought previously to soothe her Pakeha readers and to suppress her anger, [Grace] is now ready to charge them, not with past and irremediable injustices, but with continuing injustices".[16]^[20] In response to these comments, Grace has said that she was endeavouring to write about "ordinary lives of ordinary people" and did not expect it to be seen as political.^[6] She also rejects criticism that the novel is racist against Pākehā, and notes that she never specified the race of the developers.^[5]

The novel was also criticised by some publications, including