This Compulsion In Us

Winner of the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for General Non-Fiction

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?