This Compulsion in Us

It’s not beautiful, not at all, when it’s there in front of you, but writing transforms.

In her first book of nonfiction, prizewinning author Tina Makereti writes from inside her many intersecting lives as a wahine Maori – teacher, daughter, traveller, parent – and into a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment.

Makereti stands at the foot of her mounga and pays careful attention to tohu. With her tupuna at her elbow she casts around for home, meets taonga in museums, and writes her way towards her father. She walks through the darkness with others, in awe of Te Kore, Te Po and Te Ao Marama—a universe of potential being, dark and light. These are some of the kaupapa that underpin her work and her way of moving through the world, both enlivened and haunted by a compulsion to write.

Included here are frank and moving essays about the wahine who have shown her many ways of being a Maori woman, the pain and dark humour of living with an alcoholic, a blue boob from breast cancer treatment, and the potential of art to return power to survivors of colonialism. What if we could transform the events that made us who we are? What if there were a way back to the beginning? By turns lyrical, personal and critical, This Compulsion In Us is many things all at once, and an unforgettable portrait of one of Aotearoa’s foremost storytellers.