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There's a Cure for This: A Memoir

By Emma Wehipeihana (Espiner)
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Brief Description
The striking debut memoir from award-winning doctor and writer, Emma Espiner. "I don't know why medicine felt like coming home but, for some reason, it fits. I keep thinking about how the tohu, once awarded, can never be taken back. There are few things in life... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The striking debut memoir from award-winning doctor and writer, Emma Espiner.

"I don't know why medicine felt like coming home but, for some reason, it fits. I keep thinking about how the tohu, once awarded, can never be taken back. There are few things in life that emphatic. Better not fuck it up."

From award-winning writer Dr Emma Espiner comes this striking and profound debut memoir. Encompassing whanau, love, death, '90s action movies and scarfie drinking, There's a Cure for This is Espiner's own story, from a childhood spent shuttling between a 'purple lesbian state house and a series of man-alone rentals' to navigating parenthood on her own terms; from the quietly perceived inequities of her early life to hard-won revelations as a Māori medical student and junior doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Clear, irreverent and beautiful, this book offers a candid and moving examination of what it means to be human when it seems like nothing less than superhuman will do.

'Deadly serious, darkly funny. An exploration of hurt and healing, love and loss, life and death, motherhood and medicine. Espiner's frank account of finding her vocation as a Māori doctor is so precise it cuts bone deep. A controlled and fearless narrator of the visceral facts of our shared humanity and the various kinds of suffering science is no match for - including, at times, her own - she takes us to the heart of what tears us apart and shows us how to put ourselves back together again.' - NOELLE McCARTHY

'Gutsy, fierce, reflective. Dr Emma Espiner tells compelling stories about finding and then making her own path - as a modern Māori woman; a descendant, mother, friend and partner; a doctor of medicine. She does not skip over the twists and turns... her insights are both useful and at times provocative.' - DR HINEMOA ELDER

Chapter titles:

  • Pepeha
  • Sweet llamas in the night
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  • He was the author of his own demise
  • I am going to demonstrate empathy now
  • Please explain the gaps in your CV
  • Māori doctor
  • Colonising the coloniser
  • Don't plant a fruit tree over your uterus
  • Tangi on State Highway 1
  • 'E korero ana ahau i te reo Māori anake Mama'
  • She had an epiphany on a beach in Northland
  • The end of the beginning
  • Practical skills for the zombie apocalypse
  • How not to sit an exam
  • Storytelling is the medicine
  • Whakawatea

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780143776857

Publisher: Penguin Group (NZ)

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 09 May 2023

Country: New Zealand

Imprint: Penguin Books (NZ)

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 234.0mm

Weight: 242g

Pages: 192

Collections

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About the Author

Dr. Emma Espiner (Ngati Tukorehe, Ngati Porou) is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and political commentator. Her podcast on Maori health equity, Getting Better- A Year in the Life of a Maori Medical Student (RNZ/Bird of Paradise Productions) won the Voyager Best Narrative Podcast of the Year in 2021. In 2020 she won the Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager media awards, and her work has featured at newsroom.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, the Guardian, the NZ Herald and in academic and literary journals and books. Espiner lives in Auckland, where she works at Middlemore Hospital as a surgical registrar. The memoir There's a Cure for This is her first book.

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