Reviews

The Parihaka Woman by Witi Ihimaera

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madlymusing's review against another edition

4.0

I learned a lot while reading this book - the interweaving of historical events and figures with fiction was refreshing, interesting and while sometimes challenging, highly original. I particularly liked the links to other works such as Fidelio, Twelfth Night, and The Man in the Iron Mask. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like it.

I didn’t know much about this period of New Zealand history before I started reading, but am now inspired to look into it further. It’s heartbreaking and fascinating.

robdawgreads's review

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4.0

Witi Ihimaera's The Parihaka Woman represents an significant piece of Māori and New Zealand history and literature. Ihimaera writes a fictional story of love and loyalty nested into the folds of important, factual historic events surrounding the pacifist Māori settlement at Parihaka in Taranaki. In the late 1800s, European land-grabbers and the implemented British legal system perpetrated several injustices against the Parihaka Māori. This segment of New Zealand history is not taught to the general NZ population, providing more credence to the saying "history is written by the victors". The story of Erenora and the Parihaka people is powerful and deeply moving. I highly recommend.

sara_unlost's review

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emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A good story but it suffers from a narration inconsistency and needs to be better balanced in painting the scenery and balancing dialogue. Nevertheless, the subject of Parihaka and the story of the Maori is welcome and sparks great interest in learning more.

anakuroma's review

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5.0

TW:
Racism, racist slurs, colonialism, death, death of a parent/spouse, rape, pregnancy from rape, wrongful imprisonment, isolation, torture

An amazing fiction based on history and journals of Erenora, from whom the author is a descendent. I adored the (possible) queer undertones, honesty, and powerful history of Aotearoa.

beekaycee's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

nicolaanaru's review

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In case it isn’t obvious, I am reading these novels at random - I’ve identified roughly 60 novels by Māori authors, but the order in which I read them is determined by what I can source from my library, or through online second-hand bookshops. I mention this because I currently live in a country where a significant part of the population are demonstrating, participating in civil disobedience, and advocating for the dismantling of white supremacy. Police are inciting violence and using military tactics and tools in response to peaceful protests; and murders by police are continuing. And of course, all of this is happening amid COVID-19 - and while I am happy to see that Aotearoa is currently free of the novel coronavirus, that is far from the case in the United States.

All of that context made Witi Ihimaera’s The Parihaka Woman a very difficult read. The novel is the story of Erenoa, a girl who grows up in Parihaka and marries her childhood sweetheart, Horitana. Eventually, the Pākehā government aims to dismantle Parihaka, and Erenoa and Horitana both defy this oppression, and Piharo, the son of a British Lord who has settled in Taranaki who is humiliated in an early encounter at Parihaka. From there, Piharo develops an obsessive vendetta which sees many Māori men imprisoned or sentenced to hard labour. Horitana is secretly shipped off to Peketua Island, where he is kept in solitary confinement, and confined further with a grotesque tangata mokomokai/silver mask without eyeholes. It is a cruel and excessive punishment which borders on Marvel-movie levels of ridiculousness.

The arrests were too terrible to behold. There arose a sound of such grief, such a deep moaning, that you could not stop your own sadness spilling out. A surge like a deep sea swell compelled the people forward to try to stop the arrests. But I remembered that other prophets of the Holy Bible had suffered in the hands of despots, and I saw that as Te Whiti and Tohu were led away, they were not bowed down.

From there, Erenoa disguises herself as a man, and leaves Parihaka in search of her husband; accompanied by her sisters, whose husbands were also imprisoned. Eventually, Erenoa discovers where Horitana is imprisoned, and puts herself in the service of his jailer in the hope of rescuing him.

The content of this book is heavy - colonization, murder, rape, kidnapping, imprisonment and torture all fare within its pages. But beyond the content, and beyond the current events I was sitting with as I read it, the treatment of the book is also very heavy. The book borrows liberally from opera, Twelfth Night, The Man In The Iron Mask, and, I’d like to think, The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a postmodern storytelling device - the narrator is a Māori history teacher (and descendant of Erenoa) who is translating Erenoa’s papers from Te Reo into English, and inserting his own perspective. Several chapters feature not insignificant descriptions from history textbooks, and the numerous primary sources and textbooks are cited at each chapter’s end. The book includes a lengthy series of notes upon its conclusion. It is part opera, part history book, and part action flick - so in addition to requiring a lot of emotional endurance to get through, it’s also manages to be dull and confusing in parts.

It is not until the history teacher narrative slows and Erenoa begins on her quest that I started to feel some sense of action, of not simply reading long narratives of injustice and cruelty against Māori, and the many ways Pākehā and the British Crown manipulated laws and loopholes to inflict violence and take possession of land and properties. Erenoa’s quest shows endurance, imagination, empowerment, and above all, love of her whānau.

And now, let me plait and weave the flax of our desire into each other’s heart and tighten the tukutuku so that it will never break apart.

Erenoa pressed her nose against his and, oh, it was as if all the years melted away. Her heart, how it fluttered, ka patupatu tana manawa.

The experience of having spent so long in the damp cave never left him; no matter how valiant his heart, its rhythm was forever weakened, and he was plagued with breathing problems and rheumatism. And sometimes he would murmur softly in his sleep, in a loving way, and stroke the air delicately with his fingers. Erenoa was puzzled until he explained: “It’s just my little tuatara family. They come to me in my dreams and like to nestle against my skin.”

This is an ambitious book - indeed, as the cover says, it is an epic story of love and war. As I have mentioned, it is beyond heavy - but ultimately, the story rests on the bravery and leadership of Erenoa, and (to a degree) the agency she took in recording her story.

The white feather is a sign that all nations of the world will be one, black, red and all others who are called human beings. This feather will be the sign of unity, prosperity, peace, and goodwill.