Highly recommended collection

Huia Short Stories 10: Contemporary Maori Fiction
(Huia, RRP $30)

This collection of stories kept me thinking and eager to read on. It made me look forward to the 11th collection and want to read the previous nine too. It’s difficult to pick out a favourite but I think it had to be “Awa” by Shelly Davies. It’s about a man “coming home”. Shelly won the Auckland University of Technology Creative Writing competition in 2011 with “Leap” so it seems that she is already a writer of note. These are the best of the stories and novel extracts from the 2013 Pikihuia Awards for Maori writers and most of the authors are very newly discovered talent.

Many of the stories are about coming home or being home or coming to an appreciation of one’s roots. There is a sense in many of the deep spirituality of the tangata whenua and the importance of whanau and knowing or discovering one’s whakapapa.

Thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommended.

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