Jessica Hansell, best known by her rap nickname Coco Solid, opens up about the power struggles of gentrification in a new autobiographical novel.
How to Loiter in a Turf War follows three friends navigating relationships, racial tensions and rampant property development in their home of Tāmaki Makaurau.
Hansell is a writer, poet, musician, multimedia artist, creator of cult Māori cartoon Aroha Bridge, and has multiple screenwriting credits.
Photo: Supplied
Producing a piece of literature was scary and intimidating, Hansell tells Kathryn Ryan.
“Arguably, I could say it’s what I cared the most about and because it’s so personal and generous in that way, I definitely felt a new vulnerability that I’ve never really experienced before.
“I think you can have a bit of bravado and defence with other mediums that a book just won’t let you have.”
Her relationship with the literary world has been quite tense, she says, where she doesn’t see it as inclusive as it deems itself to be.
“Now I’m kind of having a new dynamic where I think I found my community and my platform and I’m able to share with a really passionate audience because people are really receiving it well and they are sharing their stories of gentrification, how it’s impacted their families or their communities.”
But Hansell doesn’t put the narrative of the novel on a binary of just pain or happiness, rather the reality of survival with everything intertwined, she says.
“I’ve had people respond to the book saying, oh all these things happened to these three friends and yet at the end of the day they seem to be okay.
“And for me it’s like yeah, well, that’s life for many people, that’s a lived reality, we have a lot of stuff going on, we have a lot of inequities, we have a lot of struggles and yet you see these people who at the end of the day, they have a sense of belonging, they have a sense of friendship, they know their cultures and they know who it is they want to be.”
That resilience and mana of the main characters is a big theme of the story.
“I think that’s because that is a condition of coming up in the city and having the experience of being say a Māori-Pasifika person, person of colour in a fast-gentrifying neighbourhood but it’s also the experience of many people who feel marginalised on the backfoot of social change that doesn’t necessarily rewrite them into the picture as it makes supposed advancements.
“These girls are cool, and they’re brave, and they’re survivors and they don’t have to advertise that because I think anyone who comes from that background, they’ll recognise it.”
Gentrification is a personal subject for Hansell, who describes the transformation of the suburbs, where her whānau lived for years, as like having her "world rewritten in front of her".
“I was living on Karangahape Road when my grandmother, who passed away recently, had to go into care and leave Grey Lynn and that for me was a big separation anxiety between my cultural connections and history with the area.
“And then just seeing these cranes going up and the power dynamics just turning into I’d say a comedy of errors, but it wasn’t very funny.
“It’s a pretty in-depth time of my life and it is really I guess the taonga that lived to tell the tale this book, it means a lot in that way.”
And there’s a part of her that she seeds into the characters too, she says.
“When I was writing, I was having a lot of fun because it’s really literally me just arguing with myself, I was like oh I wonder who’s going to win this? Which side of myself is going to resonate with readers more?
“I’ve had different kinds of people come up and say I really identify with Te Hoia, or I’m the grumpy academic friend who buzzkills everybody, I had somebody else say oh I definitely see myself as Rosina, I can’t keep away from these white boys, and Q whose pretty much really staunch and gets it done.”
Her own passions feature in the characters as well as structure of the book, which weaves in prose poetry and illustrations.
“I was always multi-disciplinary in nature, I would always try and bring other mediums into whatever it was I was doing and I would always have I think quite a tension with people who were quite, I won’t say purists, but people how took their art form very seriously.
“If you’re creative, you want to try everything. You want to see how far your story-telling can go and can it fit into every medium possible and I think I’ll always be pushing that for myself, I’ll always be trying new things because I think, for me anyway, that’s the point and helps me reach new audiences and get my kaupapa into new ears and eyes.”
Navigating the power dynamics of gentrification is one matter, but Hansell says there’s a similar issue in the liberal arts field.
“I think power dynamics in the liberal arts are inextricable, you cannot escape them and it’s just colonial models are everywhere in terms of survival.
“I definitely have had my little tussles with institutions, and I know that sovereignty of my art practice is crucial and us being able to control our narratives is essential for marginalised audiences and specifically indigenous story telling.”
She wants to keep pushing herself to transform the frameworks of that system.
“Going beyond that, how can I render those frameworks irrelevant and create frameworks all of my own and in which I don’t have to necessarily worry about that.”
Coco Solid will be appearing at the Auckland Writers' Festival next month.
