Michelle Rahurahu: The road to Poorhara

Michelle Rahurahu is this year’s winner of the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction in the Ockham Book Awards for her first book, Poorhara, a tragicomic road trip novel that judges praised for its clear depiction of colonialism. Here she talks to Dale about her path to writing, learning to deal with rejection, and growing up in the Deaf community.

 

Kia ora, Michelle. Would you be kind enough to tell us about your names, how you came to carry them, and maybe describe your whānau setting?

My name is Michelle Rahurahu. I do have middle names: Rose and Mary. I thought it was Rosemary for a very long time, but when I went to get my degree, they said: “Oh, you’ve spelled it wrong. Check your birth certificate.” So, I did and, yeah, it was a bit, “Shame!” [Laughs.] They were right. So, yeah, it’s Michelle Rose Mary Rahurahu.

My birth name is different — it’s Scott, Michelle Scott, and there are conflicting stories about why that happened. My grandfather’s last name is Rahurahu, and all the way back it’s Rahurahu. But there was a decision made — maybe to make things easier, maybe to honour a foster parent somewhere along the line — but at some point in my mother’s generation, we all took the name Scott.

Now we’re in a revival where all our family are going: “Let’s go back and honour this ancestor that we descend from — Rahurahu.” So, it’s with great pride and joy that I get to reclaim that name.

That leads into the iwi stuff, the hapū stuff. I come from two hapū: Ngāti Tahu-Ngāti Whaoa. My ancestor Rahurahu was a Tainui chief, a Raukawa chief. He marched into Te Arawa whenua and said: “I want this land.”

There was a bit of a fight, and in the end, it was settled with marriages. So now we have this Tahu-Whaoa confederation of Tainui and Te Arawa tribes.

I also have connections to Kahungunu through my grandmother on the coast.

I don’t know too much about my Pākehā Irish side, but I do know that there are some connections to Northern Ireland and to England.

That’s the biological whakapapa stuff. But when I’m talking about whakapapa, I like to consider the other things that are less tangible. My mother, Tui, raised me and my two sisters, and she’s a Deaf wahine. So, the Deaf community, the Whaikaha community, is a huge part of what makes me “me”. They’ve always been surrounding me and giving me love and support — so, Whaikaha, Deaf whānau, are the third branch of my whakapapa.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Rotorua. That’s where all my whānau connected to our tūrangawaewae. We all grew up there, and then we moved to Tauranga to find better jobs. Me and my family would go back and forth from Rotorua to Tauranga to be with the wider family, a lot.

I’m imagining you’re comfortable and always have been with sign language. Is that how it was?

Yeah, that’s my first language. It’s a language that babies pick up quite quickly because they don’t have the capacity to speak. They’re still developing the parts in their throat and mouth that are required to utter precise sounds. So when you have a mum whose language is sign language, the baby picks it up really quickly.

So, my first language at three months old was New Zealand Sign Language. I like to call it my native language, because that was my home language. And that’s the one that I use now, today, whenever I’m able to.

There’s sometimes a distorted view that people using sign are intellectually challenged. Did you come across that sort of bias or people misinterpreting what sign language is about?

Children of Deaf adults have their own identity. We call them CODAs, and that’s an acknowledgment of the really pivotal role that a child is forced into when they’ve got a parent who’s Deaf, because they become the translator. And that crosses a lot of ethical boundaries, because you’re offering authority and control to a child who has to faithfully translate very serious conversations between adults.

I’d go into these spaces and try to translate things for my mother, and they’d say really horrible things, considering me to be the adult in the situation because my mother can’t understand them. So I heard all the discrimination and the bias — the idea that my mother wasn’t very intelligent, or that I had better judgment than my mother, because of this sense that she wasn’t as intelligent as she is. I think people really assume that Deaf people are secondary citizens, and that’s just not the case at all.

So, yeah, the discrimination was there, the idea that there’s something wrong with you inherently, and then on top of that, there’s racism because my mum’s Māori. So, you’ve got layers and layers of discrimination there.

Can we celebrate your mum for a while? I hope she’s still with us.

Of course!

How would you describe your mother?

She’s a tough person. And she’s hilarious. She’s the funniest woman I’ve ever met. I think that even though there’s the language barrier, Deaf people have an excellent way of bridging that gap. She really dominates a room with her presence — she’s got so much charisma. She is kind, but she’s tough. She has to be tough because when you go out into the world and people are trying to brush you off, you gotta get in people’s faces. Yeah, she’s a tough Te Arawa woman, and no one will mess with her.

Are Māori any better in the way that we accommodate this challenge compared to non-Māori? Or do we have the same entrenched bias because we don’t understand the circumstances that Ngāti Turi, the Deaf community, face? Are our people any better at accommodating that?

I think Māori are kinder. Even though you can’t understand the very intimate and very specific challenges of a Deaf person, in my exchanges at least, I’ve seen a lot more patience. That’s all you really need to bridge the gap.

As I said, my mum is very good at trying to find a way to communicate with someone who doesn’t use her language. What you often find on the other side is an unwillingness to spend the necessary time. But on the whole, Māori are willing to spend that time, because they know from their own experience that it requires time, it requires relationship building and whakawhanaungatanga to get to a point where you understand someone.

Did your mum’s deafness come as a result of not understanding interventions when she was younger? I say that because glue ear, for instance, has been a challenging issue. Or was your mum’s condition a hereditary one with nothing to do with being inattentive to interventions?

My grandmother had rubella — German measles is what they called it at the time — while she was pregnant. I think my mother was born in 1969, and at the time, there was an epidemic of rubella, particularly among pregnant women. So you saw a boom of Deaf children coming out of that time.

But, you know, it doesn’t help that medical intervention and assistance are lacking for Māori. It really doesn’t help when you have a system that doesn’t take your medical inquiries seriously.

Obviously, deafness does not define a person. It’s the heart of the person that shines through ultimately. So thank you for acknowledging your mum’s strength.

I think for Deaf people, they really claim it as an identity: This is what we love about ourselves — our language, our culture that we’ve developed within this shared experience. It’s so important to acknowledge those strengths.

You’re a writer. Did you always feel comfortable expressing yourself with a pen, and who encouraged you along that way?

It was very clear from the get-go that I loved books, I loved reading, I loved telling stories. My sisters and I used to play a game called “play drawing”. We’d get a big piece of paper and all three of us would draw on it, but we’d narrate the story as we were drawing. Then, once we’d finished, we’d stick it on the wall, and we could come and breathe life back into it.

Coming back to that as an adult, I’d think: “Oh, that’s like a carving, right? It’s like we’ve made a carving on paper and then we’ve put it on the wall so that we can come back and reference it again.” No one told us to do that — it’s just something that we did.

We were creating communal stories together. We were enacting what our ancestors did, without even realising. I think there’s an innate sense that when you’re young, you want to tell stories. Then, as I got older, reading all the time, I just loved the books that I was reading, and I thought: “I really want to do that.”

But no one had any time to focus on what Michelle was doing. The adults in my life were just trying to make rent and do all that stuff. But eventually, in my 20s, I went: “Oh, okay, I think I can do this.” But it was my cousins and my sisters who really drove that process. My peers who were sitting next to me, saying: “Oh, I’m enjoying this story, keep going.”

I think once you put your story out to someone — it has to be someone — then you start to realise the potential that you have.

I love reading passages where the words are crafted in ways that affect you emotionally and give you a reason to pause and reflect on the quality of the writing, and marvelling at it, to be honest, Michelle. So talk to us about some books where you’ve been flicking the pages and thought: “Wow, look at that!”

Oh, gosh, there are so many books that stand out to me like this. I’m going to sound biased, but I really love our writers. I think we’ve got amazing writers. I love Turncoat, by Tĩhema Baker. Reading that book blew my mind, and it keeps blowing my mind. If anyone’s looking for recommendations, definitely read that.

I think the poets that we have are just so special — essa may ranapiri, Ruby Solly. We just have beautiful, beautiful writers that really get to the heart. Whenever I read the poems from our Māori writers, I think: “Wow, we’ve got something. We’re magical!”

Did you do some mundane work when you left school, or was it a varsity trajectory for you?

I did lots of different work. I started working when I was 16 and, like most of us, probably did odd jobs. I worked at Mitre10 Mega, worked in hospo a lot, I did catering. I was a waiter — and that’s a really good name for it, because you’re standing around waiting and watching people. You get a great chance to be invisible because nobody’s looking at the waiter.

So you get to weave through crowds and watch the way that people talk to each other. Watch the way that people interact. Or even watch a small drama unfold over the course of the night.

That really helped in the way that I form characters and dialogue. Dialogue is one of my favourite things to write, and I think those moments where you’re sitting inside the world but not visible to it — you’re just a watcher, a waiter — you get a good sense for the cadence of the way that people talk to each other — the half-finished sentences, the interruptions. Those are the important parts to capturing someone’s voice. So, yeah, I reckon waiting’s a good job if you want to learn how people talk.

Sometimes when you read novels, you get the feeling that the dialogue is not the way that somebody would really talk. So you’re being attentive to what people are saying without being an eavesdropper, right?

I would never share something that was clearly confidential. But I think just being around people and hearing how they talk and seeing how they’re expressing things — maybe not fully in words but in the sounds they’re making, or in the way the words they’ve said connect with their expressions, or the way that they’re sitting, or the context of the situation.

I mean, I was eavesdropping, really, but, you know, in a very respectful way. “Just chilling, just getting stuff for my book, don’t worry about me.”

So at some stage, working at these other jobs, you put something together that somebody took note of.

The coolest gift you can give someone is to say: “You’ve said something that I want to hear more about.” I feel very blessed to be in a situation where someone who doesn’t even know me — and there’s no reason for them to feel connected to me at all, apart from the work — says something like that. It brings a tear to my eye and makes my heart swell up, because for someone to sit down and read your work, it’s a gift.

I tear up when I hear the karanga, not all the time, but I think it’s a deep-rooted pride in our Māori cultural way. I wonder about how you transmit that feeling onto a page? It seems like quite a challenge, because rather than something that you’re seeing, it’s a feeling — and how you can share that with others? Does that strike you, too?

I think that’s the biggest challenge: finding something that’s going to not just describe, but hit someone where they really feel it. Like a karanga, where it’s so beautiful and strong and sincere that you’re reduced to tears.

Man, if I could do a karanga in writing, I feel like I would’ve won something. I don’t know, I guess you have to be vulnerable. A karanga is a vulnerable place, right? You’re standing up by yourself, and you don’t know when you open your mouth if the sound is going to strike true. You’ve practised and you hope so, but that performance is a really vulnerable place.

So, I would say vulnerability. Going as deep as you can. Trying to access the things that make you feel something, and putting that on the page, representing it and believing in the delivery of it.

There’s a lot of doubt that you feel when you’re writing. You’re all alone and you’re sitting there going: “I don’t know.” When you feel afraid to put something on the page, it’s a good indication that you have something that’s gonna shake the ground a little bit.

Congratulations on your debut novel, Poorhara. Is this the first work that you’ve published, or is it a culmination of many efforts on the writing front? Talk with us about the writing process.

I was working on this manuscript for about six years. Along the way, there were opportunities to publish small snippets or poems or stories in journals and stuff. So, I did that to keep honing my skills, and to put myself into the world a bit. Put myself into a space where people could react to my work.

And there were a lot of rejections, because not everyone wants what I’ve got to give, and that’s fine. But I think the process of being rejected is a really great way to prepare yourself. Because even when you put out something you truly believe in, there’s going to be someone who doesn’t like it. Fair enough. You have to be prepared to hold steadfast in the work that you put out.

Short answer: I did a whole lot of submitting to journals, all short-form stuff. Some of it got accepted, some of it didn’t. For me, that was an exercise in how I’m going to feel when the long-form big project comes out.

I would have got angry and given up!

Oh, you get angry, sure. The rejection hurts. You’re like: “Oh no, I’m not the most genius person in the world, and not everybody loves me. Noooooo!”

But then you go and talk to your friends, and they say: “Get over yourself, just do it again.” My partner said: “Here’s my challenge for you. I want you to get 100 rejections. Your goal is not to get acceptances or to get something into a journal, your goal is to get rejections.”

And that’s a freeing exercise. Okay, the goal is to get rejected — you secretly want to be accepted, but you’re ready to accept a rejection. You’ve got to steel yourself, and you’ve got to have good friends around you who are going to laugh at you when you cry about it.

If you write 100 pieces and deliberately try to get them rejected, you’ve every chance of getting them accepted, right?

Yeah, you do. There is a sense in which even the thing that you think is rubbish might get accepted by someone, and it’s a way to loosen up. Don’t be so rigid. Stop trying to write something that you think the person on the other side wants. Write what you want to write. And then if it doesn’t get picked up, that’s fine, because you wrote what you want to write, and you’re not trying to write to an audience.

I guess a lot of people try and work around the other way, thinking about what the audience might like. There’s quite a difference between essays, poems and novels. How do you switch between them?

You’re trying to be adaptive. You’re trying to develop your skill. I was like: “I’m rubbish at poetry.” I can attest to that. It feels very, very different from novels. With poetry, you can’t hide in a flurry of sentences. You have to really cut it down. Every word has to matter and prove itself. So, for me, it was a challenge. I would switch forms and mediums so that I’m sharper, and I’m able to imbue the writing I do in my novel with all the lessons I can learn from poetry writing or essay writing.

For essay writing, clarity is king. You want to make sure that what you’re saying makes sense. For poetry, you want to enchant the reader who’s reading your work. And I think for novels, it’s a combination of all the skills you learn across these different methods.

Which brings us to your wonderful pukapuka Poorhara. The setting is 2019, and two cousins, Erin and Star, are making the trip to their whenua in a beat-up Daihatsu Mira. The Ockham judges said they liked your story of “tragicomic crises” and the clarity of your depiction of colonialism. Tell us more.

It baffles me sometimes that colonialism — the settler state — is not more present in people’s minds, when it just seems so clear and visible to me. In my story, I think of it as composed of two main forces. There’s the desire of the two cousins, the protagonists, to go forward spiritually and physically. They physically want to go forward on this road trip, but they also want to progress. They want to grow.

And the other force is the desire of the rest of the environment in the world that they’re in, to hold them back, to hold everything exactly the same as it was back in the 1940s. There’s a real stagnant quality to the country that reeks of all these very clear colonial markers that are trying to rewrite history — to rewrite Māori participation in that history, and to affirm that Pākehā have been the main pioneers of this place.

For me, it wouldn’t make sense to write a story of two Māori cousins in a beat-up car roaming through this country without talking about all these different monuments to the colonial takeover of this land. So I’m really happy that people marked that as a success. But, yeah, it’s baffling to me that we wouldn’t talk about that, because it’s everywhere.

Poorhara has been a neat vehicle for you to get more widely known, more widely read, and hopefully, it will encourage you to step forward into more projects. Was it tiring to write it? I know many writers screw up page after page after page. What would you say about your process for writing it? Some writers wait to be inspired. Others are more deliberate. They sit at their desk, saying: “This is my job. I’ve got to be serious. I’ve got to put four or six hours in today.” What was the process like for you?

It took six years to get this 300-page book done. I don’t imagine I could get it done any faster than that while trying to hold down a full-time job and be a sister, a daughter, a cousin, a friend — all those other duties that I hold dear that take up space in my life.

It takes as long as it takes. If it takes 10 years, that’s the time that it takes. Obviously, I’d like a bit more time to devote to my writing, but I don’t think that’s realistic. For me, it’s just about carving out time, and it doesn’t have to be a long period of time. Maybe do 10 minutes in the morning, maybe do an hour in the week. The purpose is just to keep going, to keep marching forward to that goal.

But in the process of working towards it, you’re going to feel so much contentment. I loved having a novel that I could go home to, and putter on. It was my little baby. And, yeah, I miss the presence of a manuscript in my life, so I might have to start one up.

I would say that writing can be frustrating, but it’s the type of frustrating that just feels so enriching and fulfilling to have. It’s like planting a garden. It takes forever, and the fruits of your labour aren’t going to pop up overnight, but even having your hands in the soil is nice, eh?

Yes, but when you know that tomatoes are the end product, it takes some of the mystery out. Did you know the finish before you started?

No, I didn’t. There’s no one way to enter a book, and there’s no one way to exit. It’s like a motorway. There are many different entrances. Some people like to design a full structure before they even start writing, so they know exactly how it’s going to start and exactly how it’s going to end.

That’s not my style. I just go in. I just merge in, and then I’m on the motorway and I’m writing. And then, at some point, I understand it’s time to get out. We’re done here.

So, in the process of writing, I’m figuring out what the end is. I’m letting my characters make decisions with me. I can see a little bit further ahead than they can, but we’re all figuring it out together.

So, all three of you are on a road trip? You, Erin, and Star?

Yep, I’m in the back going: “Oh, maybe we should go this way.” But ultimately, I’m not the driver.

Your characters are driving a Daihatsu Mira. Even with the success of your debut novel, I don’t suspect that you’re driving a Hummer or a Lamborghini.

No. I’m a bus person. I love the bus.

Oh, that’s the best place to listen.

Absolutely.

What else are you doing, Michelle? You say you’re working full-time as well as writing?

Yeah. I work in violence prevention. I’m something of an educator, going around talking about how we can prevent violence in our communities.

So, I’m connected to the world, and that’s really enriching for me. I love people. I have so much faith and joy when I connect with them. That’s where my energy comes from. I love chatting with people and listening to their stories and their thoughts. That helps me go forward.

Violence prevention is such an important topic for people in circumstances when emotions are heightened, and they don’t have the tools to prevent escalation into violence.

The work I do aims to provide those tools. I think everyone has the ability to change and to make better informed decisions once they have the tools.

I meet plenty of guys where no one’s really shared with them other ways to react except with their fists. And we all need to know how to be more mindful of our own emotions and have tools that can help keep emotions in check when they’re pushed.

Absolutely.

What are your main tools for violence prevention?

The work we do is making us aware of the overall system that upholds violence — the ways in which patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism uphold violence, and actually minimise and cover up violence.

And then understanding our own role in upholding that violence — how we uphold violence in our words, in our actions, even though we may not consciously understand that we’re doing that — and then assuming responsibility. Calling it out when you see someone saying something that’s a bit off, that upholds violence in its words or values.

I’d be more specific with you, but this training usually takes three hours! But the three main points are: understanding the foundations of violence, understanding that we have a role in that, and then assuming responsibility and calling it out.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

E-Tangata, 2025