Literature's power lies in simple local stories that speak globally

The stories we can tell best, and which can lend themselves to the most esoteric theories, are the stories that we understand. Local stories. Simple stories powerfully told. [iStockphoto]

Between 2008 and 2012, one of the examinable secondary school set books in Kenya was The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. The novella is one of those small and deceptively simple books that pack a lot of punch in terms of symbolism, meaning, universality of human struggle and the ability of literature to capture the reality of a certain people’s worldview so succinctly that you, as the reader, find yourself taking your position among the characters and likening some of them to your real world.

The Whale Rider tells the story of a girl called Kahu, the rejected-stone kind of character who tries to show a grandchild’s love for her grandfather, a chief called Koro Apirana, but the latter seems too steeped in patriarchy and the belief that only a boy child can inherit leadership. The story by Ihimaera, a towering literary figure in New Zealand, succinctly captures the Māori worldview, specifically the concept of whakapapa (genealogy) and the oneness of the natural and spiritual worlds. In the Māori worldview, humans and whales are believed to have one ancestor, Kahutia te Rangi.