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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 Māori – 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 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. 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 wāhine who have shown her many ways of being a Māori 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.
Praise for This Compulsion In Us
‘This book opens up the world—the gritty, hungry, paradoxical world. Like the best essayists do, Tina opens her world to us in the most personal of ways, then out and out again so that your view is much much bigger than when you began.’ —Tusiata Avia
'This is such an important book. Beautiful. Completely compassionate, utterly necessary.’ —Ingrid Horrocks
‘Her name reminds me when to be careful, and when to take risks. Her name keeps me safe.
‘In This Compulsion In Us, Tina Makereti takes many risks; the writing is a skilled yet poignant navigation of the “choppy, dark seas of identity loss and searching”. It is a compelling read: a provocative mix of notable essays that consider what writers do and what she does, blended with sections of refined and reflective memoir. These chapters are coloured by a sharply unconventional upbringing, her reconnecting with her Māori mother and beloved grandmother at sixteen, and her life as a young mother living overseas. She is guided by ghosts, inspired by memories and affirmed by tīpuna, by an ancestral presence that consistently reinforces her creative work. Her fiction sings with their voices; this new book describes where they come from, how they manifest, inspire and protect.
‘What pervades This Compulsion In Us is the power of imagination, the impact of story, the motivation to grasp, examine, and release. Writing, in itself, is an act of defiance and bravery. Tina has the courage to write what scares her, to put it all out there, carefully, eloquently, and by doing this she makes sense of so much. And she offers this to the reader, asserting that writing is healing and retaliation, discovery and exposure. Taku taina, tēnei rā taku mihi aroha ki a koe; mā te pene, mā te tuhituhi, ka piri pono ai, ka hono tahi ai, ō tātou wawata.'
—Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, Kohitātea 2025, Te Kuirau
Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) is the author of three acclaimed novels: Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, and most recently The Mires. 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. Her first novel won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori 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 Māori and Pasifika writing. Tina has curated exhibitions on social and cultural history at Wellington Museum, Ngā 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.
Cover design: Chloe Reweti (chloereweti.com; Instagram @chloereweti.mahi)
Cover photograph: Ebony Lamb
