Witi Ihimaera

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Witi Ihimaera

Witi Tame Ihimaera - Smiler DCNZM QSM (born February 7, 1944 , better known as Witi Ihimaera ) is a New Zealand writer who is often considered the greatest living Māori writer.

Life

Ihimaera was born near Gisborne , a city in the east of the North Island of New Zealand . His mother was a Māori from the Iwi Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki , his father Tom of Anglo-Saxon descent. He began his career in 1973 as a diplomat at the New Zealand Department of State and held various diplomatic posts in Canberra , New York and Washington . He remained in this ministry until 1989 with interruptions through fellowships at the University of Otago (1975) and the Victoria University of Wellington in 1982. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University of Wellington . In 1990 he took up a position as Professor and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Māori literature at the University of Auckland .

Most of Ihimaera's work consists of short stories and novels . The most significant of the many stories he has written are Tangi , Pounamu , Pounamu, and The Whale Rider . The latter was successfully filmed by Niki Caro in 2002 under the title Whale Rider and brought the as yet unknown leading actress Keisha Castle-Hughes an Oscar nomination. In his stories, Ihimaera deals with the Māori culture in modern New Zealand and the problems in contemporary Māori society .

In 1995 Ihimaera published Nights in the Gardens of Spain , a partly autobiographical work about the coming out of a married father of two daughters. He himself came out in 1984 when he started this work, which he did not publish out of consideration for his daughters.

He was inducted into the New Zealand Order of Merit as a Distinguished Companion in 2004 for service to literature .

His nephew Gary Christie Lewis married Davina Windsor in 2004 , becoming the first Māori to marry into the British royal family.

Works

Novels

  • Tangi (1973)
  • Whanau (1974)
  • The Matriarch (1986)
  • The Whale Rider (1987)
    • German: Whale Rider : The magical story of the girl who rode the whale , Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2003 ISBN 3-499-23628-1
  • Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies (1994)
  • Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1995)
  • The Dream Swimmer (1997)
  • Woman Far Walking (2000)
  • The Uncle's Story (2000)
  • Sky Dancer (2004)
  • Whanau II (2004)
  • The Rope of Man (2005) (consisting of ' Tangi ' and its sequel ' The Return ')
  • Band of Angels (2005)
  • The Parihaka Woman (2011)

Short story collections

  • A sense of belonging
  • Pounamu Pounamu
  • The New Net Goes Fishing
  • Growing Up Māori
  • Yellow Brick Road
  • Beginning of the tournament
  • A game of cards
  • Return To Oz
  • Ask the posts of the house
  • Dustbins
  • The Child
  • Big Brothe, Little Sister
  • In 1999 his book of stories " Aroha " ( Edition Isele ) was published in German

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Renee Kiriona : Queen's Birthday Honors 2004 : Witi Ihimaera . In: New Zealand Herald . NZME. Publishing , June 7, 2008, accessed October 20, 2008 .
  2. ^ Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon : Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History . Routledge , 2002, ISBN 0-415-29161-5 , pp.  204 f . (English).
personal data
SURNAME Ihimaera, Witi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ihimaera-Smiler, Sir Witi Tame (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand author
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1944