Tina Makereti is a fiction and nonfiction author, with This Compulsion in Us being her first nonfiction book, though essays within the collection have been published separately. That alone should tell you the significance and extreme power of these writings. If you need further compulsion of your own, then consider this: This Compulsion in Us won in the General Nonfiction category at the 2026 Ockhams Awards. It is a hard-hitting collection that sings, cries, shouts, and whispers, proving what a storyteller Tina Makereti is, showing the immense strength and delicacy of her words, and the persuasive, lingering quality of her thoughts.

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.

Within the first 50 pages, I was a goner. I felt so seen, so hard, so felt by someone else I have never met. I knew the exact feelings she was battling with: the whakamā of being Māori but being unable to recite your place, the uncertainty of being both Māori and Pākehā, the disconnection of being a city-dweller and not visiting the marae of your tūpuna. I feel this all. I swear, I almost thought I was reading the essays of me from the future after the journey had been walked. A me from an alternate reality where I aid my navigation through writings like this, essays that shared my unspoken grief and lack of place in a world I wish to give back to. Reading Tina Makereti’s words really hit home with me, and I can only imagine how it will feel upon finishing this momentous collection.

For that reason, I am taking my time with this one. I am consciously moving away from reading books just to write reviews. I am sitting with my reads, stopping when and where I need to, and letting the teachings and bits of resonance settle within me before continuing. I have so much time to enjoy these works, the discoveries and personal journeys of fellow wāhine toa who are doing wonders in the community, not just domestically, but internationally as well. These women are shaping my perceptions of what it means to be a Māori woman and a Pākehā woman in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I will not rush that learning. Some readings stick with you, be it fiction passages, poetry verses, or nonfiction essays, and you do not want to dislodge them from your brain. You do not want to force them out of your thoughts just to tick a box, mark something as read, and move on. They shape you, alter you in a very intimate, personal way, and they deserve to be heard and to be at the forefront of your mind.

If you take anything from this read, let it be this: give your reading time. Let books sit with you. Let them settle, forming connections and building on prior thinking, literature and experiences, and have them find a home with you before you pick up something else to read. We are in a time where literacy is low, failing by some standards, and critical thinking is in quick decline. It is works such as these that make us human, make us cognitive thinkers, and make us the problem-solvers and contemplators we are. We need books and written work to challenge us and our ways of thinking, and the best way to welcome that in is to give them the space to reside.