Staying with our trouble: Disease and dis-ease in sick-lit & eco-fiction from Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

In this thesis, I compare depictions of disease by Māori and Pākehā/European authors of young adult fiction, demonstrating that while Pākehā illness narratives tend to employ the microscope, and individualise disease through a form of narrative containment and compartmentalisation reflective of a Western world view, Māori illness narratives tend to employ the macroscope, and collectivise disease, moving the focus from the individual to broader human and other-than-human environments. However, I argue the containment observed in pre-COVID Pākehā illness narratives appears to be disintegrating, as post-pandemic publications move into closer alignment with Māori-authored narratives, which combine elements of sick-lit and eco-fiction genres. Further, I argue that within these Pākehā texts, te ao Māori (the Māori world) offers healing for Pākehā characters, yet the fundamental concerns driving Māori-authored fiction—namely, the dis-eases rooted in colonial capitalism, such as, for example, intergenerational grief, trauma, and inequity—are left largely unearthed. Though disease appears to be ubiquitous in Māori fiction, I found Māori characters are often absent from Pākehā-authored hospital-based sick-lit, and relegated to the margins in Pākehā-authored eco-fiction, where they appear healthy, and content to support the goals of dis-eased Pākehā. In contrast to their fallible Pākehā counterparts, I argue these Māori side-characters are limited by “goodness”, and are at risk of being reduced to a kind of “herbal supplement”, as Pākehā authors fail to address the conflicts and disparities between Māori and Pākehā worlds: a vital aspect of our local ecology that I propose cannot, in good faith, be divorced from realist Aotearoa New Zealand eco-fiction, given the significance of Land Back and decolonisation movements to the health and wellbeing of our Treaty partners, and arguably, to all New Zealanders. Despite disparities in representation, I argue Māori and Pākehā authors of young adult eco-fiction essentially identify the same “poison” and “medicine”—respectively: toxic masculinity, and reconnection with the other. In conclusion, this thesis presents my original young adult novel, which incorporates aspects of human and environmental disease and dis-ease I argue are underrepresented in local young adult fiction by Pākehā authors. Tāne and the Invisibles follows a queer Pākehā protagonist and her Māori and Tauiwi friends as they navigate eco-anxiety, anticipatory grief, and the uncertainties surrounding their increasingly complex relationships with Self, each other, and the human and other-than-human Other.