Takatāpui
2024 curated booklist
Takatāpui is a traditional Māori term meaning ‘intimate companion of the same sex.’
It has been reclaimed to embrace all Māori who identify with diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics.
Tane’s War
Brendaniel Weir
One lifetime, two battles. It’s 1953 and Briar is a dreamer living with his father in Pukekohe. His behaviour sees him sent to a training farm to be “turned into a man”. But the plan backfires when his arrival awakens feelings in fellow shearer, Aussie. Tane is the farm foreman and his Māori heritage sets him apart. Briar and Aussie threaten the walls Tane has built around his own secret past; walls created in the trenches of WW1. Tane is confronted with a choice. He cannot change history but maybe he can help change the future.
Category: NZ Author, Historical Fiction
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781988547589
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Dawnhounds
Sascha Stronach
The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.
Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.
Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.
Category: New Adult, NZ Authors, Fantasy
Representation: Transgender, lesbian, bisexual, non-Binary, takatāpui
Content Warnings: Violence, substance use/abuse, sexual violence, homophobia, sexual activity, police violence/brutality, gore, character death
ISBN: 9781982187057
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues
H.S. Valley
Tim Te Maro and Elliott Parker, classmates at Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept, have never gotten along. But when they both get dumped the day before the big egg-baby assignment, they reluctantly decide to ditch their exes and work together. When the two boys start to bond over their magically enchanted egg-baby, they realise that beneath their animosity is something like friendship… or physical attraction. Soon, a no-strings-attached hook-up seems like a good idea. Just for the duration of the assignment. After all, they don’t have feelings for each other, so what could possibly go wrong?
Category: NZ Author, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult
Representation: Takatāpui, gay, lesbian, bisexual, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Discrimination, mental illness, sexual activity, substance use/abuse
ISBN: 9781760508753
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Rangikura
Tayi Tibble
Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up. Barbed and erotic, vulnerable and searching, Rangikura asks readers to think about our relationship to desire and exploitation. Moving between hotel lobbies and all-night clubs, these poems chronicle life spent in spaces that are stalked by transaction and reward. Here is a poet staking out a sense of freedom on her own terms in times that very often feel like end times. Tibble’s range of forms and sounds are dazzling. Written with Māori moteatea, purakau, and karakia (chants, legends, and prayers) in mind, Rangikura explores the way the past comes back, even when she tries to turn her back on it. At once a coming-of-age and an elegy to the traumas born from colonization, especially the violence enacted against indigenous women, Rangikura interrogates not only the poets’ pain, but also that of her ancestors. The intimacy of these poems will move readers to laughter and tears. Speaking to herself, sometimes to the reader, these poems arc away from and return to their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They invite us into the swirl of nostalgia and exhaustion produced in the pursuit of an endless summer. A new highpoint from a writer of endless talent.
Category: NZ Authors, Poetry
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Racism, abuse
ISBN: 9781776920730
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Honouring Our Ancestors
Edited by Alison Green, Leonie Pihama
In these rigorous and challenging essays, writers from Aotearoa and Turtle Island (Canada and the United States of America) explore the well-being of takatapui, two-spirit, and Maori and Indigenous LGBTQI+ communities. Themes include resistance, reclamation, empowerment, transformation and healing. Central to Honouring Our Ancestors is the knowledge that, before colonisation, Indigenous peoples had their own healthy understandings of gender, sexual identities and sexuality. Some of these understandings have survived the onslaught of colonisation; others require decolonisation so that our Indigenous nations can begin to heal. Through this lens, the writers gathered here contribute their knowledge and experience of structural and social change. This collection was inspired by two major research projects: the HONOR Project, which investigated well-being in American Indian and Alaskan Native two-spirit communities, and the Honour Project Aotearoa, which investigated Kaupapa Maori strengths-based understandings of the health and well-being of takatapui and Maori LGBTQI+ communities. Edited by Alison Green and Leonie Pihama, Honouring Our Ancestors upholds the independent authorities and languages that distinguish our Indigenous nations and celebrates the relationships that bind us. Decolonised Indigenous knowledges are offered as a wellspring of unlimited potential for Indigenous communities and nations everywhere.
Category: NZ Authors, Non-Fiction
Representation: Takatāpui, two-spirit, diverse genders, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781776920730
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tahuri
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
Tahuri is a moving collection of short stories by Maori writer Ngahuia Te Awekotuku depicting the title character – Tahuri – coming of age in New Zealand. Tahuri is not interested in going with the boys, Tahuri likes watching the big girls, she likes watching the women dressed in men’s clothes, and finally Tahuri likes Mirimiri, a young woman like herself.
Category: NZ Author, Short Stories
Representation: Takatāpui, lesbian
Content Warnings: Sexual violence, racism, homophobia
ISBN: 9780473385552
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Both Sides of the Moon
Alan Duff
Jimmy understands all about belonging and not belonging. He sees himself as part of both sides of the moon; ‘…kind of blackman, sort of n*****, in my own country, and kind of white, sort of The Man, the other half of me.
I am torn yet I am more whole since I am both…’He is part of a fractured family, and it’s only when he learns about his forebear – a brave warrior who became an outcast from his tribe – that he begins to understand the darker implications of his heritage.
Category: NZ Author
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Abuse, character death, self-harm, suicide, sexual violence, sexual activity, substance use/abuse, violence
ISBN: 9781250313188
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Echidna
essa may ranapiri
essa may ranapiri’s second poetry collection follows the story of Echidna, their own interpretation of the Greek Mother of Monsters, as she tries to figure out life and identity living in a colonised world. Alongside this, Māui and Prometheus get into a very hot relationship. Echidna contends with three strands of tradition; Greek mythology, Christianity and Māori esoteric knowledge, and through weaving them together attempts to create a queerer whole. It is a book that is in conversation with the work of many others; from Milton and R.S. Thomas to jayy dodd and Joshua Whitehead to Hinemoana Baker and Keri Hulme. Situating and building its own world out of a community of queer and Māori/Pasifika writing, it carefully places itself in a whakapapa of takatāpui story-telling.
Category: NZ Authors, Poetry, Fantasy
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781776920099
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Sexuality and the Stories of Indigenous People
ED. Jessica Hutchings and Clive Aspin
Since the beginning of time, sexuality has played a fundamental role in ensuring good health and well-being of people throughout the world.
Today, there is a growing understanding of the important role that sexuality plays in the lives of individuals and communities.
For indigenous people and for Maori, our understanding of our sexuality today is heavily influenced by the historical understandings passed down to us by our ancestors. Gradually, as we uncover the truth about what our ancestors believed and peel back the veneer of colonization, it is clear that the sexuality of indigenous peoples is vastly different from the dominant Western paradigm that has been applied around the world.
The stories in this book testify to the great diversity of Maori and indigenous sexuality today and provide inspiration for people who want to know more about sexuality and its role in our lives. The people in this book have overcome huge challenges related to their sexuality.
These stories will inspire and encourage you, and parts of them will sadden you. The truth that shines through in these stories, though, will confirm that sexuality continues to play a key role in the lives of indigenous people in the twenty-first century. As we decide for ourselves what sexuality means to us, we take control and determine the future for generations to come.
Category: NZ Authors, Non-fiction
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781869692773
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke
Tina Makereti
A vivid novel about a Māori boy exhibited in Victorian London – a provocative tale about what makes us human. ‘The hour is late. The candle is low. Tomorrow I will see whether it is my friends or a ship homewards I meet. But I must finish my story for you first. My future, my descendant, my mokopuna. Listen.’ So begins the tale of James Pōneke – orphaned son of a chief; ardent student of English; wide-eyed survivor. All the world’s a show, especially when you’re a living exhibit. But anything can happen to a young New Zealander on the savage streets of Victorian London. When James meets the man with laughing dark eyes and the woman who dresses as a man, he begins to discover who people really are beneath their many guises. Although London is everything James most desires, this new world is more dark and dazzling than he could have imagined.
Category: Young Adult, NZ Authors
Representation: Takatāpui, Gay
Content Warnings: Discrimination, racism, violence, sexual violence, homophobia, abuse, police violence/brutality
ISBN: 9780143771562
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Uncle’s Story
Witi Ihimaera
Michael Mahana’s personal disclosure to his parents leads to the uncovering of another family secret-about his uncle, Sam, who had fought in the Vietnam War.
Now, armed with his uncle’s diary, Michael goes searching for the truth about his uncle, about the secret the Mahana family has kept hidden for over thirty years, and what happened to Sam.
A powerful love story set in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam and in present-day New Zealand and North America, Witi Ihimaera’s powerful new novel courageously confronts Maori attitudes to sexuality and masculinity and contains some of Ihimaera’s most passionate writing to date.
Category: NZ Author
Representation: Takatāpui, Gay
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9780143018988
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Funkhaus
Hinemoana Baker
A queer / takatapui Maori writer living in Berlin, Germany since 2015, Hinemoana Baker brings a unique perspective both to and from the ‘global North.’
Drawing on the German meaning of the word ‘funken’—to send a radio signal—her latest collection broadcasts unsettling songs of rebirth, love, friendship, and alienation across homes and languages, to the living and to the dead. Funkhaus is home to big, punchy poems and shimmering delicacy, as well as Hinemoana’s trademark humour. This book invites readers to tune out the crackle and static, and dial in their own receivers to a signal that has travelled a long way to reach them, no matter where they are.
Category: NZ Authors, Poetry, Adult
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Abuse, sexual violence
ISBN: 9781776563142
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Hine Toa
Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku
An incredible memoir by a trailblazing voice in women’s, queer and Maori liberation movements
‘Remarkable. At once heartbreaking and triumphant’ Patricia Grace
In the 1950s, a young Ngahuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close to her kuia, she craves more: she wants higher education and refined living. But whanau dismiss her dreams. To them, she is just a show-off, always getting into trouble, talking back and running away.
In this fiery memoir about identity and belonging, Ngahuia te Awekotuku describes what was possible for a restless working-class girl from the pa. After moving to Auckland for university, Ngahuia advocates resistance as a founding member of Nga Tamatoa and the Women’s and Gay Liberation movements, becoming a critical voice in protests from Waitangi to the streets of Wellington.
Category: NZ Authors, Autobiography
Representation: Takatāpui, lesbian
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781775542322
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tōku Whānau Rerehua / My Beautiful Family
Rauhina Cooper
How was school today, Huia’ her mum asked. ‘It was okay … but our news topic is our family.’
Huia feels too shy to talk about her family to her classmates because she has two mums. Will her friends laugh at her and tease her?
Over the next days, she learns that some whānau have a step-parent, some have one parent, and some children are adopted. There are all sorts of families! So when her turn comes to show her family photo, she doesn’t have to be shy.
Written in te reo Māori and translated into English (te reo appears first on the pages), Rauhina Cooper’s story is beautifully illustrated by award-winning illustrator Izzy White.
Category: NZ Author, Children, Children’s Picture Book
Representation: Gay, lesbian, takatāpui
Content Warnings: No warnings apply
ISBN: 9781760508753
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Rere Atu Taku Poi! Let My Poi Fly!
Tangaroa Paul
“Hihiko ana te whānau o te kura I te mutunga o te poi. Koia nei te tuakiri tūturu o Rangi
The crowd erupted into cheers when the poi ended. Rangi felt amazing. He felt he belonged. He felt he was being his true self.”
Ka nui te aroha o Rangi ki te kapa haka, heoi, ko te poi tana tino kaingākau – ahakoa ngā kōrero a ngā hoa ā-kura, mā ngā kōtiro anake te poi. Tērā pōhēhē tērā! Ka māuiui te kaitātaki wahine i mua i te tū o te kapa ki te pō whakangahau, ka riro mai ko Rangi ki te kawe i taua tūranga. Ka pēhea ngā tauira me te hunga mātakitaki ki tēnā.
Rangi loves doing haka but performing poi is his favourite — even though his classmates say it’s just for girls. When the lead poi performer falls sick before a school performance, Rangi has to take her place. How will the other students and audience react — Surely a boy can’t lead the poi?’
Category: Children, Children’s Picture Book
Representation: Diverse gender identities, takatāpui
Content Warnings: No warnings apply
ISBN: 9781990042485
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Ruahine: Mythic Women
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
Ruahine is a collection of traditional Maori stories retold from a contemporary feminist perspective.
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku uses her extensive and expert knowledge of Maori culture to add quiet authority to her radical re-interpretations. A straight, authorised version of the story is briefly given, followed by a re-telling: readers unfamiliar with the stories can read the original and then enjoy the re-telling.
Often subversive and always redolent with idiomatic detail these re-tellings breathe fleshy life into characters and stories rendered static by repetition. Irreverent, daring and heart-warming, Ruahine asks readers to swim with Hinemoa to Mokoia Island to meet her lover Tutanekai, limbs aching with cold and exhaustion; and to feel the despair and keenly tempered fury of the bird-woman, Kurungaituku, her family horribly murdered by a trusted servant…
Category: Short Stories, NZ Authors, Adult
Representation: Diverse sexualities, diverse genders, takatāpui, lesbian
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781877283826
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)