'We can never underestimate the value of being able to see ourselves in stories'

Shilo Kino’s latest novel reflects her own experiences of reconnecting with her ancestral language, she tells RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

Kino won a major award for her first book The Porangi Boy- and now her first novel for adults - released last year - is a finalist in Ockham Book Awards.

Kino, like her character Māreikura Pohe in All that We Know, went back to kura to learn te reo Māori where she completed a year-long immersion course at Te Wananga Takiura in Tamaki Makaurau.

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Despite being fluent in Mandarin, she struggled with her own language, she says.

“Mandarin is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, it was hard, but I managed to get it and become pretty fluent within six months of learning.

“And then when I came back to Aotearoa, and I knew I had to learn te reo Māori, when I tried it was like something was stuck, and it was really hard for me to learn.”

Intergenerational trauma and grief played a part in this, she says.

“What happened to my grandparents when they were beaten, all of those things that come with learning your own ancestral language. There's definitely a lot of grief in that, and it's something that I've had to deal with, but it's also very beautiful experience as well.”

The main character in All That We Know, Māreikura, is in an immersion class, a class in high demand and she resents Pakeha taking up space, Kino says.

Māori, she says, feel whakama (embarrassed) when they can't speak, or they're struggling to speak, their own language.

“Through no fault of their own and then they come across Pakeha, who are just being able to get the language so quickly, who are fluent. And it sort of feels like, Holy hell, it feels unjust and unfair, and it just not really anyone's fault.”

Fiction, Kino says, is the last bastion of truth-telling.

“Fiction is timeless, and fiction is always going to be here. And what I love about fiction too, is I can read something that perhaps was written in the 1800s and I get to sort of like a trance, it brings me into that portal, and that time place and what was happening.”

From the perspective of a Māori writer, it’s about her telling stories that Māori, in particular rangatahi, can relate to, she says.

“We can never undervalue, can never underestimate the value of being able to see ourselves in stories. And I think that's so important, for Māori rangatahi to be able to read their own stories.”