Witi ihimaera parents magazine

New Zealand writer (born 1944)

Witi Tame Ihimaera-SmilerDCNZM QSM (; born 7 February 1944) is a New Zealand author.

Ihimaera is an influential figure in New Zealand literature, and over his long career has won numerous awards and fellowships.

This year marks 50 years since Witi Ihimaera's novel Tangi was published.

Witi's mother, Turiteretimana Tikitiki Keelan, , when she was in her mids.

The memoir deals essentially with the first 16 years of Ihimaera's life, from to , when portable computers were not yet invented.

Witi's father Tom is second from left; his mother Julia fourth from the left.

Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu (1972), and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi (1973).

After his early works, he took a ten-year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English.

From the late 1980s onwards, Ihimaera wrote prolifically. In his novels, plays, short stories and opera librettos, he examines contemporary Māori culture, legends and history, and the impacts of colonisation in New Zealand.

He has said that "Māori culture is the taonga, the treasure vault from which I source my inspiration".^[1] His 1987 novel The Whale Rider is his best-kno