The Whale Rider
SynopsisPlot
Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny. Her people claim descent from Kahutia Te Rangi, the legendary "whale rider." In every generation since Kahutia, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir, and the aging chief is desperate to find a successor. Kahu is his only great-grandchild--and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. But when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe, it is Kahu who saves the tribe when she reveals that she has the whale rider's ancient gift of communicating with whales.
Story
About this book
The Whale Rider is set in Whangara, a coastal settlement on the East Cape of New Zealand's North Island. Written by Witi Ihimaera, the novel follows eight-year-old Kahu, a girl born into a Maori community that traces its ancestry to Kahutia Te Rangi, a figure said to have arrived on the back of a whale. Since that time, leadership of the community has passed through a line of male heirs. Kahu's great-grandfather, the aging chief Koro, is searching for a successor, but no male heir exists in the current generation.
Kahu is Koro's only great-grandchild, and she wants badly to earn his recognition. But Maori custom, as Koro understands it, does not accept a girl as chief. The story centers on this tension between inherited tradition and a child's persistent bond with her people and with the sea. When a mass whale stranding threatens the community, the question of who truly carries the old connection to the whales becomes urgent and unavoidable.
Ihimaera, who grew up in the Gisborne region of New Zealand, is one of the country's most widely published Maori writers. He has produced novels, short-story collections, and edited anthologies, and has taught English and creative writing at the University of Auckland.
