This Pakeha Life : An Unsettled Memoir

April 2025 reprint

This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pakeha. Every Pakeha becomes a Pakeha in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Maori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pakeha - and other New Zealanders - curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pakeha often experience in our relationships with Maori.

A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pakeha and Maori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.