Photo by Colleen Maria Lenihan
Ataria Sharman (Tapuika, Ngāpuhi) is a writer of essays, poetry and articles. She is the editor at The Pantograph Punch and creator of Awa Wahine.
Ataria has a Master of Arts in Māori Studies and spent a year researching mana wahine and atua wāhine as well as interviewing Māori women about their experiences with atua wāhine. Her children’s fiction novel Hine and the Tohunga Portal was selected for Te Papa Tupu in 2018 and published by Huia in 2021. She has self-published a collection of writings by wāhine Māori on the atua wāhine.
How big a part of your childhood and young adulthood was writing? Were there any particularly influential books in your life?
Although writing wasn’t a massive part of my childhood, I loved reading. That was before gaming took over; if I was a kid now, I might’ve gone down the path of gaming. But back then, reading and television were the best forms of escapism. Two of my favourites were Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and the Redwall Series by English author Brian Jacques. Both heavily feature animals; in Northern Lights, the animals are daemons, a kind of physical manifestation of the human soul. In the Redwall books, all of the characters (good and bad) are animals; there’s no real mention of humans at all.
The Redwall series spans multiple generations and has its own genealogy and ancestors, ancient myths and lore. I enjoy that kind of in-depth world-building, and there are parallels to Māori concepts like whakapapa and tūpuna. There are also exciting battles and climatic moments when all the goodies come together at the end and overcome a common enemy. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. Give me a Marvel movie any day.
Hine and the Tohunga Portal is your first novel, a Young Adult fantasy about a young girl on a journey to rescue her brother in a realm of atua Māori, patupaiarehe and more. What drew you to YA fantasy as a writer? What advice do you have for how writers can offer a unique perspective when working in that genre?
I love YA fantasy, it’s exciting, and you can do what you like because you’re not bound by realism or the physical laws of our universe. You can give people superpowers and magic. You can have aliens pop in for a kapū tī. Whatever you want really… and that’s powerful. Also, I find younger characters feel fresh because they’re coming across new experiences every day and learning new things. This makes them particularly interesting to watch. I say watch but what I really mean is when I read, I see the book like a movie in my head.
My advice for a unique perspective is to challenge the norms of what other authors are putting out there. Look at what other people are doing and do the opposite. Stay away from tropes and tokenistic stereotypes, and if you accidentally fall into one (it happens to the best of us), catch yourself and rewrite the scene or the characters.
In terms of Māori literature, I talked to someone the other day, and we agreed that imaginative, joyful and uplifting books are important, particularly for rangatahi. You know, like a rangatahi Māori space adventure or urban wāhine Māori and LGBTQA-friendly romance novel series. Whether we’re protesting, breaking down barriers, learning our language back or fighting for tino rangatiratanga, I think it’s okay to have a bit of escapism – a bit of fun too. I think Huia Publishers do an excellent job of publishing uplifting books for Māori.
What was your planning process for creating the story? You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you envision this being a series: what do you think will be different about your planning for the subsequent books?
I’m a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki. The storylines and characters of his anime movies like Spirited Away, Totoro and Nausicaa are my absolute favourite. They can be pretty random too (think No-Face in Spirited Away), but that’s what I like about them. Anyways, Miyazaki’s writing (or drawing) practice is that he literally just sits there and draws out the scenes, and the story unfolds in front of him. The other day I was reading an interview of his, and the reason is that he’s allowing the story to tell itself rather than telling the story.
Hine and the Tohunga Portal was written like this. I’d get up, usually early in the morning and see the story happen in my head, and write down what I was seeing. It’s like watching a movie. Of course, it was my imagination, but I think the key is that I wasn’t trying to steer my imagination in a particular direction; I was allowing it to unfold. However, I realised the other day that Hayao Miyazaki didn’t really make any movies into a series. So I think I’m going to need a bit more planning for the rest of the books. I’m lucky, though. Although I didn’t plan the rest of the series while writing the first book, I somehow managed to set it up quite well for the following books. So that’s a relief!
I’ve got a whiteboard in my office where I’ve written down all these plot ideas for the series. Most of those ideas came to me on a recent solo drive to Tāmaki Makaurau and back. My plan is to bounce ideas off other Māori, particularly rangatahi, stick to my own guidance, and confirm the plot with what feels right. I think workshopping ideas with others gives you more possibilities, and then it’s up to you as the author to decide which fork in the path you’ll take. In saying that, I’ve already started writing the second book.
What has been some of the best feedback you have received on your writing?
You know, I’ve had excellent reviews for Hine and the Tohunga Portal, but nothing can compare to hearing from other Māori that my writing has helped them in some way. A while back, a Māori māmā DM’d me on Instagram to say that she’d been looking for something like Harry Potter for her six-year-old boy. In her search, she’d happened upon Hine and the Tohunga Portal, and her boy loved it so much they were on the second read. That feedback was special to me because I can only imagine how hard it is to get a six-year-old boy to read, so if it captivated him, there must be something there.
A wahine Māori also messaged me on Facebook after reading the short story I wrote in the Atua Wāhine collection by Awa Wahine. It’s called ‘Moko of Hineteiwaiwa’ and is about a young child spending time with the atua wahine Hineteiwaiwa and their adventures. The wahine said that she could see the story as clear as day in her head like a magical movie and sobbed and cried while reading it at the realisation that she’d been disconnected from her taha Māori. She said that the story had brought light into her hirikapo. Feedback like that reminds me of the power of the written word. The power of storytelling for healing.
You’ve written about decolonising methodologies and utilising this thinking when writing Hine and the Tohunga Portal. Can you speak a little about how young Māori writers might achieve this in their own writing?
It’s quite a hard kaupapa to describe. Because of colonisation and society, having racist experiences and being a minority, I grew up with negative ingrained thoughts about my own culture. Studying in the Māori Studies Department at university and learning about what really happened when the settlers came to Aotearoa challenged me and helped me unlearn these negative thoughts because they weren’t true. I’m glad that I did this before writing Hine and the Tohunga Portal. Otherwise, I could’ve let these negative thoughts slightly alter the characters or storyline without even being aware of it. I might’ve fallen into stereotypes and tropes. And I still may have; I’m always open to feedback on my writing. But utilising decolonising methodologies and education helped me venture off-course and into the forest in my storytelling. It’s also a continuous journey of learning. Because of the context of my upbringing, I don’t think I’ll ever fully experience a mind completely free of colonialism.
You are the founder and editor of Awa Wahine, a website and journal publishing wāhine Māori. Can you tell us about what drove you to create this space? In what ways do you think Aotearoa’s literary industry could better support emerging Māori writers?
You know, the more and more I think about it, Awa Wahine is the space where I can publish whatever I want to publish! It’s like the ultimate tino rangatiratanga of writing for me. If someone submits something, I can be like ‘publish’. That’s super cool.
As a wahine, and having experienced sexism and how it can be challenging, Awa Wahine is a safe space for sharing without judgement. We’ve published pieces about sex and reproductive health to menstruation and atua wāhine… there are not many spaces where you can share your thoughts on those kinds of kaupapa.
What is next for Awa Wahine in 2022 and beyond?
We’re releasing a six-monthly printed magazine called Awa Wahine. I’m excited about this because it means we can continue to share the diversity of experiences that make up being wāhine. When I say wāhine too, it’s not gender-specific; it’s for anyone who feels connected to their feminine side. My goal for the printed magazine is to be fully sustained by subscriptions by the community who reads it. I hope it continues to publish the writings of wāhine for hundreds of years. That would be an incredible legacy and a lot of fun too!
You’re hugely productive in your writing and editing life. You’ve mentioned in other interviews how you used the Te Papa Tupu writing programme as motivation to complete Hine and the Tohunga Portal. Do you have any other practical ideas, writers can use to set goals, stay focused and get the work done?
You know, honestly, I think I’m weird. I’m just driven to do things that are just ridiculous sometimes. So I guess my advice would be – if you’re weird like me, go for it! Walk towards what you’re dreaming for, and don’t let anything stop you. Also, writing a novel is like running a marathon. It takes mental fortitude. A few pages a day over a whole year will do it. One step at a time.
The difference between those who want to write a novel and those who have is the latter continued until they’d finished. The others gave up at some point.
What will you be working on next?
I’m working on the second book in the Hine and the Tohunga Portal series. Watch this space (and pick up a copy of the first one if you haven’t already)! The working title at the moment is Hine and the Ancestors’ Bones.