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This Compulsion In Us
Winner 2026 Ockham NZ Book Award for General Non-Fiction
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Brief Description
It's not beautiful, not at all, when it's there in front of you, but writing transforms. 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...
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This Compulsion In Us
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In her first book of nonfiction, prizewinning author Tina Makereti writes from inside her many intersecting lives as a wahine MΔori β teacher, daughter, traveller, parent β and into a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment.
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Description
It's not beautiful, not at all, when it's there in front of you, but writing transforms. 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 Maramaβa 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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781776562299
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 08 May 2025
Country: New Zealand
Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 138.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 320
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The 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Winners
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026
Tina Makereti
About the Author
Tina Makereti (Te Δtiawa, NgΔti TΕ«wharetoa, NgΔti Rangatahi-Matakore, PΔkehΔ) is the author of three acclaimed novels: Where the RΔkohu Bone Sings, The Imaginary Lives of James PΕneke, and most recently The Mires. In 2022, her essay βLumpectomyβ won the Landfall Essay Prize, and in 2016, her short story βBlack Milkβ won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region. Her first novel won the 2014 NgΔ Kupu Ora Aotearoa MΔori Book Award for Fiction, also won by her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa, in 2011. Alongside Witi Ihimaera, she co-edited Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology that celebrates MΔori and Pasifika writing. Tina has curated exhibitions on social and cultural history at Wellington Museum, NgΔ Taonga Sound & Vision and the Courtenay Place light boxes, and been guest curator for book festivals. She has been awarded numerous residencies and presented her work in Australia, Frankfurt, Taipei, Jamaica, Canada and the UK. Tina teaches a Master of Arts in Creative Writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters.
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