While literary analysis of Witi Ihimaera's The uncle's story (2005 [2000]) has predominantly focused on the novel's male, homosexual protagonists Sam and Michael, this article intends to put centre stage the minor, but nonetheless innovative, and highly diverse female characters of Auntie Pat, Roimata and Amiria. The complex negotiations of modern and traditional attitudes, sexualities and ethnicities, Māori heritage and Pākehā ideologies that play out with regard to these fictional personae will be taken into consideration, hence opening up a scholarly space and a potential fictional point of reference for the heterogeneity of Māori women's life worlds in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. Implementing the rather novel research paradigm of intersectionality in literary and cultural theory and combining it with New Zealand-specific cultural concepts, this paper aims at spiralling in and out of the complexities and intricacies of fictional representations of Māori women's identities -- focusing thus, on the auntie's story in The uncle's story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]