Becky Manawatu
“My hands were shaking. My workmate filmed me opening the box. The beautiful, jeweled tūī by Penny Howard almost flew off the cover and out at me…
The cover looked so perfect. I felt my stomach sort of drop when I saw all those words I’d written. So many pages, so many words and people. A book, a whole world: Arama, Taukiri, Beth, Toko, Jade, Kat, Colleen, Henare, Lupo, Sav, Megan, Elliot, Felicity, Head, Coon, Hash, Stu, Sunset, Blue, Miss Matt… their words, some of their whakapapa, their faults and scars and mamae. I knew there was a chance that between these two perfect covers were hapa. I knew there was beauty too and love, fury, remorse and forgiveness. I knew what most reporters know: you can read, reread, check and rewrite but only when there are many, many more eyes on your words, will the hapa leap from the pages at you. These feelings came to me, in my moment of happiness at holding a book in my hand that we had made. The video came up just the other day on Facebook Memories. I watched it and it was like looking at another person. I remember how holding my own book was everything I had ever wished for and that I was happy for little Becky Wixon, the kid who just wanted to write stories. But I also remember that I felt afraid. I had an overwhelming urge to turn back time and be alone with the characters another day, or two, another lifetime, even.
Often, I question my right to tell the story in Auē, but I have learned to do this in a way that doesn’t kneecap my mana. Instead, I think questioning myself has drawn me closer to my whakapapa and reo and made space for deep sadness, happiness, whaiwhakaaro and growth. I stand behind my mahi. I own it. I wrote this book and I am indebted to it, to the people who helped me make it, and to every single beautiful, ugly, broken, crack-up, whole, exhausted, wronged and roaring character in it. I am indebted to every reader who reads and reads on. I want more of us to have the space and choice to be able to create rather than just survive. The world is full of inequity but creativity, and the rights that propel it, can be part of helping change that. We can burn ivory towers down and make something better. Tihei mauri ora.”
Becky Manawatu is the author of Auē, winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2020 and the MitoQ Best First Book of Fiction 2020.