Poorhara - Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa)

Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa)

Published by: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Winner of: BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD FICTION

The Best First Book Award is sponsored by Mātātuhi Foundation.

Poorhara is a road trip novel unlike any other. Two cousins, Erin and Star, pile into a 1994 Daihatsu Mira in a desperate bid to escape the suffocation of racism and poverty, the rigid expectations of whānau, and the trajectory of their own pasts. The judges were impressed by the urgency of Michelle Rahurahu's tragi-comic crises and the clarity of her depiction of colonialism, a presence in the book as incessant and rotten as Star’s relentless toothache.

Author Michelle Rahurahu