In her 2017 article “What the heck is Māori Literature?” author Steph Matuku wrote bluntly about the “little brown box” that many Māori storytellers feel confined to when engaging with mainstream publishing:
[Those who have the power in publishing] say that many stories they receive from Māori authors — especially emerging authors — tend to follow similar themes. Brutal stories of domestic violence. Poignant tales of returning to the rural marae. Retellings of classic myths.
Like Matuku, I believe that such narratives are valuable – many of our foundational works fall within these descriptors – but they are undeniably well-worn. I’m always drawn to new works that aim to refresh these stories in unexpected ways.
On one level Checkerboard Hill, the debut novel by writer and architectural designer Jade Kake, feels intimately familiar. Structurally, the novel shares many similarities with Witi Ihimaera’s Tangi (not the first Māori novel, but perhaps the most foundational): a protagonist returns home after sudden news of a death in the whanau, with action that moves fluidly between past and present. But there’s a brilliantly simple twist: ‘home’ in this case is Australia’s Gold Coast. Speaking to Radio New Zealand, Kake noted that such a story has not been told on this scale, and to the best of my knowledge, she’s right. Despite Australia’s large Māori diaspora, there is a lack of literature examining this complicated cultural context.
Checkerboard Hill focuses on Ria, a painter living in what may as well be Auckland (in Kake’s words) with her husband James and son Ari. Her marriage seems happy, James’ microwaveable meals tasty, but Kake quickly establishes a creeping sense of cultural disconnect and whakamā. Ria realises that Ari’s te reo readings have outstripped her own ability; James has to rescue her from a reo-speaking gallery owner that she cannot converse with; and we learn early that Ria has not visited her marae since she was a child. In the midst of this cultural disquiet, Ria learns that her younger brother has died, and she must return to her hometown of the Gold Coast to contend with the estranged whanau she left behind years ago.
Kake fully commits to the narrative’s sense of disconnect and unease. Much of the novel relies heavily on jarring, starkly-constructed sentences. There’s a rhythmic quality to the opening pages’ repeating subjects: “She pauses…”, “She unscrews…”, “She swills…”, “She closes…”, “She strips…” As such, the narrative voice is almost uncomfortably tethered to its protagonist; Checkerboard Hill is not written in first person, but it may as well be. Unknowing, therefore, becomes central to both Ria and the reader’s experience. Narratives of the past often conclude with some half-caught conversation that lingers just beyond Ria’s – and thus the reader’s – comprehension.
Denying readers the full picture can be a delicate balance, but some of the novel’s most affecting moments toy with this dynamic. At one point, Ria recalls helping to serve food during a party with her mother Donna, her ex-boyfriend Rob, and a gathering of Rob’s friends. The young Ria observes Donna taking offence to a joke told by one of the men at the party:
As Donna approached, tears welled in her eyes. When she arrived in the kitchen Ria reached out for her mum. Donna brushed her off and walked through the kitchen, past Ria and into the next room. […] The man who had told the joke broke away and staggered towards the kitchen […] He was close enough for her to smell his breath. It reeked of stale beer. He opened and shut his mouth, gaping like a fish.
‘What’s her problem? She’s not even …’ he muttered.
Ria didn’t hear the rest.
Moments like this work because of the deft push-pull of knowing and unknowing: the exchange is beyond Ria’s understanding, but readers get to see Donna – up to this point depicted as an unflinching matriarch – in a moment of vulnerability. When Ria wakes the next morning, Donna has wiped the house clean of any trace of the party, and we come to understand the pain – and resolve – that informs her character.
And yet Checkerboard Hill is often less successful with maintaining this balance. The extent to which the novel withholds information can be somewhat alienating at times, and while Kake clearly wants to build intrigue, it can feel like seemingly pivotal scenes race by without anything tangible to grasp on to. It may be thematically appropriate for readers to feel like strangers in this hazily-drawn drama, but it leaves key relationships feeling ill-defined, and what should be ‘big’ moments lack impact. When the blanks eventually get filled in, the detail is good; there are the makings of a great family drama here. But I wish the novel was more generous throughout.
This issue has unfortunate implications for the novel’s treatment of its core concern: the cultural connection – and disconnection – of those in the Māori Australian diaspora. There’s a moment early in the novel that I love, where Ria is eagerly asked by her niece to explain their Māori ancestry (“Nana says we’re direct descendants of a famous Māori chief”) – our protagonist who feels inadequate at the start of the novel now finds herself in a setting where she’s likely to be viewed as more knowledgeable about te ao Māori. This is the sort of exchange that should be at the heart of this story, but it ends before it really begins: Ria says “Okay. So…” and we’re immediately shuffled on to the next scene. There’s complex territory here, but the novel too often feels hesitant to explore it in any genuine depth.
Despite Checkerboard Hill being her debut novel, Jade Kake is an accomplished writer of non-fiction, and there’s one particular essay of hers that I like a lot. Published by The Pantograph Punch in 2019, “Difficult Horizons: On Gentrification and Violence” is about the author revisiting Brisbane through an architectural lens, reflecting on both her personal history and the way in which buildings can signal colonial violence, “by act or omission”. There’s a real honesty to the essay, and it poses genuine questions about Kake’s identity in this place:
On the bus ride, I find myself picking out the visibly brown and Indigenous faces, giving in to an old and familiar impulse, wondering how I am perceived, wondering if I pass. How well I pass. […] This is, after all, the city where I first learnt to code switch.
The essay “Difficult Horizons” shares a lot with Kake’s first novel – not just the Queensland setting, but also the focus on wandering, observing and thinking. Ria spends much of the narrative drifting through settings, responding to them as she responds to an old painting of hers in the opening chapter; many of my favourite sections are vivid, lovingly-constructed descriptions of place. The essay might be read as a rough sketch of some of the ideas and questions that would go on to inform Kake’s novel. I was excited about such concerns being expanded and addressed over the course of a 300-page novel – and there are moments when Checkerboard Hill lives up to its potential. But unlike the earnest appeal of “Difficult Horizons”, Kake’s debut novel keeps the reader at arm’s length. I constantly wanted to know more about these characters, about how tikanga manifests in these diasporic communities, about their relationships with the Gold Coast’s indigenous peoples. I’d love to see Kake return to these spaces one day.
Checkerboard Hill by Jade Kake (Huia, $35) is available in bookstores nationwide.
