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This Compulsion in Us
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This Compulsion in Us by Tina Makereti stands at the foot of her mounga and pays careful attention to tohu. With her tūpuna at her elbow she casts around for home, meets taonga in museums, and writes her way towards her father. She walks through the...
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October 2026
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This Compulsion in Us
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In these frank and moving essays, Makereti explores her many intersecting lives as a wahineMāori – teacher, daughter, traveller, parent – and a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment.
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Description
This Compulsion in Us by Tina Makereti stands at the foot of her mounga and pays careful attention to tohu. With her tūpuna 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 Pō and Te Ao Mārama—a universe of potential being, dark and light.
In these frank and moving essays, Makereti explores her many intersecting lives as a wahine Māori—teacher, daughter, traveller, parent—and a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment. From the wāhine who have shown her ways of being, to the experience of living with an alcoholic, undergoing breast cancer treatment and recognising how art returns power to survivors of colonialism, she asks—
What if we could transform the events that made us who we are?
What if there were a way back to the beginning?
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781776923359
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 22 October 2026
Country: New Zealand
Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 138.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 0g
Pages: 320
About the Author
Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) is aprizewinning writer and teacher of creative writing at the International Institute of ModernLetters, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Her novels include Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, and The Mires, shortlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She co-edited Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology that celebrates Māori and Pasifika writing, with Witi Ihimaera. In 2022, her essay ‘Lumpectomy’ won the Landfall Essay Prize, and in 2016 her short story ‘Black Milk’ won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region.
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