Potiki is a novel by New Zealand author Patricia Grace. First published in 1986, the book is a significant work in contemporary Māori literature, and explores themes of cultural identity, land rights, and the impacts of urban development on indigenous communities. It was critically and commercially successful, and received the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction in 1987. The novel was unusual for its time in not including an English glossary of te reo Māori (Māori language) words, on the basis that Grace did not want Māori to be "treated as a foreign language in its own country".
Plot summary
The novel is set in a coastal community, and 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 te reo Māori (the Māori language), and the title refers to the character of Tokowaru-i-te-Marama (or Toko), a child who foresees and is impacted by the conflict over the land.
Toko is a physically disabled child born to an intellectually disabled mother and a derelict father. He is adopted by his mother's sister Roimata and her husband Hemi, and raised with their three children in the small community with close connections to the land and the sea. After the closure of the local freezing works, Hemi has no job and they focus on taking care of the land. Toko has visions, however, of future conflict.
Later in the novel, developers attempt to acquire land to build an access road to a new beach resort, which would destroy the community's cemetery and meeting house. The community refuses and the developers react with violence as foreseen by Toko, and Toko himself is killed in the final conflict. At the end of the novel the community begins to rebuild.
Background and themes
In 1985, 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. It was her second novel, following Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps (1978).
The novel is set in a coastal community resembling Hongoeka, Grace's hometown, which is north of Wellington, New Zealand. 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.
On her writing process, Grace has said:
The book is narrated by different voices, including most notably Toko, his aunt Roimata and his uncle Hemi, and has a non-linear spiral-like structure. 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).
The story of Toko reflects that of Māui, the hero of Māori mythology, through factors like his relationship with the sea, his unusual birth and other symbols. He is also sometimes described as a Jesus Christ-like figure; as academic [[Roger Robinson (academic) |Roger Robinson]] notes, Toko's birth parents are called Mary and possibly Joseph, and his sacrifice leads to renewal for the community.
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 writer. On taking up the fellowship at Victoria she had access to a computer.
Publication
The novel's first edition was published by Penguin Books New Zealand. By 1998 it had sold over 25,000 copies, making it one of the top-selling New Zealand novels at that time and the first member of the "Penguin 25 Club".
The novel has been translated into seven languages. It is one of very few New Zealand books, and the only New Zealand book by a Māori author, to be translated into Portuguese. In 2020, it was published as a Penguin Classic in the United Kingdom.
Reception
Potiki was widely praised. John Beston, writing for Landfall, identified it as marking a new stage in Grace's career: "there is strong growth in Grace in this book, personally as well as artistically, as she presents an alternate way of life to that of the Pakeha [New Zealand European], with its own values". Ten years after its publication, Roger Robinson wrote in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature that the novel "remains both a popular success and a reference point for discussion of Māori writing and international postcolonial fiction".