Literature
Most of Ihimaera's work consists of short stories or novels. He has written a considerable number of stories, with the most notable being works such as Tangi, Pounamu, Pounamu, and The Whale Rider (the last of which became a film of the same name). His stories generally portray Māori culture in modern New Zealand. His work often focuses on problems within contemporary Māori society.
In 1995, Ihimaera published Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a semi-autobiographical work about a married father of two daughters coming out. He had come out to himself in 1984 and began the work, but out of sensitivity to his daughters, did not finish or publish it then. Nights In The Gardens Of Spain was filmed in 2010 (Director; Katie Wolfe - run time 76-mins featuring Calvin Tuteao in the central role of 'Kawa' - see IMDB) with changes to the book, making the central character Maori rather than Pakeha (European) to more closely reflect Ihimaera's life. Making the main character in the book Pakeha was Ihimaera's way of keeping his personal experiences somewhat concealed. In an article in The Sunday Star Times (January 23, 2011) to coincide with the screening of the film on Television New Zealand (Sunday 23 January 2011 - TV 1, 8.30pm) Ihimaera was quoted as saying the change "was quite a shock to me because I had always tried to hide, to say this is a book that could be about 'everyman', this is not a specific story. So it (the film) is actually nearer to the truth than I would like to admit."
Read more about this topic: Witi Ihimaera
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and given them an idea of something better. A better state of one’s feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one’s self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)