The Star Path by Witi Ihimaera Smiler, released this week, returns to the world of The Whale Rider. To celebrate, writers following in the author’s wake remember the resonance of Kahu’s tale on their lives.

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera Smiler was first published in 1987. I read it some years later in 1995 when I was 10. At that time I was obsessed with whales, orca specifically. The film Free Willy had come out in 1993 and I daydreamed of being Jesse, that boy who befriended Willy when nobody else could; who rode Willy’s slick back and rubbed his thick, pink tongue. My mum, an avid reader and great encourager of reading, perhaps noting the poster of whales on my bedroom wall and my insistence that she post a letter to orca expert Dr Ingrid Visser to inform her that I’d be a really great assistant, took me to the Tauranga Arts Festival to see a writer called Witi Ihimaera.

I hadn’t heard of him. And all around me in the spiegeltent were older women with grey hair on their heads and reverent looks on their faces. I wondered why I was there all small and unknowing in this strange circular place full of mirrors and creaky velvet booths. In the middle of us all, standing, smiling, was this writer, this man who even stood still with energy. I still remember what came after so vividly it’s like I never fully left that room, that hour. Witi Ihimaera started speaking, telling stories about his childhood and his first attempts at telling tales. I remember feeling like I was in a dream: like I was inside a book all of a sudden, wrapped in story and safe and exhilarated as this master storyteller conjured characters and images and laughs and a poignancy I didn’t couldn’t define but felt all the same.

When we got home mum gave me The Whale Rider. Reading it for the first time was a profound experience for me. It was the story of te ao Māori I had encountered in a book. Kahu was a girl I loved; I loved Nanny Flowers, too. I imagined what it would feel like sink under the water knowing the whale was going on the long dive with the big breath and I was scared and proud to live in a place where this was true. The ocean lapped and lapped around my home town, Tauranga, and in its waters I saw whales and I saw stories. Witi Ihimaera’s novel changed how I saw myself in the world: as a person living beside te ao Māori where girls rode on whales and whales carried girls to save each other in a story that went back and back and forwards and forwards.

Listening and watching Ihimaera Smiler that day also showed me the power of gathering around stories in real time. I’ve told this story before but I think it’s worth noting that almost as soon as I could I got a job in that same spiegeltent for that same festival and have maintained a relationship with writers festivals ever since.

I’m now reading The Star Path and am wrapped up in Teva’s world; his astonishing artistic talent; the journey he must take to understand where he comes from. I’m in the deep with Tehani, the whale who, like Kahu, had to upend hierarchy to lead her family forward. It’s epic and beautiful and a stunning yarn, Ihimaera Smiler’s voice flowing, rippling like waves.

– Claire Mabey

I first encountered Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider at high school, and recently I returned to the story as an audiobook narrated by Witi himself.

As a teenager, I identified with the story’s protagonist, Kahu, her need for acceptance, her quiet defiance of gender roles, and the sense that her path was to diverge from what was expected of her. Kahu is the direct descendant and namesake of the famed ancestor Kahutia Te Rangi/Paikea, whose journey on the back of a whale is remembered by the tangata of Whāngārā, and by ngā iwi of Te Tai Rāwhiti more broadly. As the story unfolds across time and space, like the cycling of waves, Kahu’s journey reminds us that we are the embodiment of our tīpuna.

Twenty-odd years later, after having the privilege of illustrating Witi’s Astromancer series (which also features a great kōtiro protagonist!), I returned to The Whale Rider in audiobook form. This time, it inspired me as a storyteller. I came away with a deep appreciation for how Witi seamlessly interweaves past and present – ka mua, ka muri – while infusing his storytelling with humour, mischief and vigour.

I look forward to following Teva’s journey in The Star Path, and to seeing how stories like these continue to inspire generations of writers to come.

– Isobel Joy Te Aho-White, author of Wāhine: A Collection of Maori Purakau

Although I was only small when The Whale Rider was published it wasn’t until the film came out when I was in my 20s that I connected with this story. I could relate to Kahu especially growing up in this time of reclamation and revitalisation of our Māori culture. I could see myself in her. Also feeling inadequate because you’re a girl, I could relate to this too. But then her Nanny was such a hero and then her own strength and superhuman abilities made her better than the boys – I loved this! It was the relationship between Kahu and her grandfather that I could sympathise with the most, as I was very close to my grandfather and it was heartbreaking to me when she was being rejected by hers.

– Kimberley Kearney, author of The Lost Words