From the moment I heard that Tina Makereti was publishing a collection of essays, I was ready and not-so-patiently waiting. When I saw the tā moko on the sternum of the cover, and then again when I read the title, I may as well have been chomping at the bit. See, like the name suggests, This Compulsion In Us, I know what it means to be compelled to know more; to dig a little deeper, to find myself in the mirror of a page. I am compelled to tell the truth of things, and even more so, to read it back to myself from other mouths.
Although widely listed as Makereti’s first foray into non-fiction, I knew that as wāhine Māori we carry our stories with us wherever we go, and that an author of her calibre in fiction must be loaded with enough pūrākau from her own world to be able to so masterfully build new ones. Now they’re here, and it’s almost as if they were there all along; all these kōrero underpinning everything she’s done until now—just waiting until she was good and ready to release them proper, to tukua ngā kupu kia rere.
As a collection of personal essays, the places and people who have played a significant role in Makereti’s life play a naturally large role in these pages too. Some of the pieces draw deeply from her beginnings as a child born from a relationship divided not only by race, but by ethics and addiction, too. From here on, the themes of her tumultuous relationship with her father and the early denial of her Māoritanga seem to track throughout—as the impacts of her often atypical young experiences continue to be felt across her later life, her relationships, and her responses to the world. Similarly, her role as a māmā features heavily, serving as an anchor point and connection between the pages.
As we follow Makereti from Canada to Jamaica, from māmā-hood to mahi, from English to te reo Māori, it ultimately feels like the tracing of a circle, a koru-esque chronology, that always brings us back to the beginning, and then before that, too. This book is for anyone that has stood on their banks of their own river and felt something ancient for the first time; for anyone who has injured themselves in the backbreaking work of digging up their history all the way to te kore; for anyone who has finally found their hometown, and then happened upon another, and another. As is said in te ao Māori, and as Makereti says herself, “Ka mua, ka muri;” this is walking backwards into the future. This is called the compulsion in us to be good mokopuna, and better tīpuna.
In the world I inhabit, as a writer and as a Māori at the foot of my mounga, the multiplicity of all things is present in everything I write, so that I cannot tell the story of writing this piece without telling the story of Parihaka, without showing you how I am that mountain, and how he is me, without also telling the story of the many apocolypses, particularly the one we face now, without telling an older story of the mounga from the time before he settled and we settled around him, without meeting my ancestor on the road and hearing his voice, without noticing the many tohu. (p. 24)
It’s these elements of This Compulsion In Us that affect me most as a reader; not just Makereti’s already established skill at putting pen to paper, or her mātauranga, but her ability to lay bare the complexities of her stories, without stopping to ‘tidy them up’ or present a different image. Connection to culture is beautiful, but lateral violence is real; finding whakapapa is healing, but whānau can hurt us too; being a kaiako is a point of pride and responsibility, but the system wasn’t built to hold us safely. The dualities of life as a wahine Māori, an academic, a parent, a child, a child of multiple iwi, a writer; these experiences and whakaaro are never linear or simple, and it is to be offered the chance to see into these conflicts, so often inner, that makes this book the koha it is.
Many, not only myself, will relate to the wero Makereti has faced within her whānau, her hauora, and her whakapapa, and in turn, the decisions that she has made in processing them, from intergenerational trauma and disconnection from whenua, to not being able to find a decent cup of tea. For those who haven’t known similar worlds to this one, this collection will serve as a history lesson likely more thorough than any you received at school, and a genuine insight into what it means to walk between two worlds, then three, then four, and still find your own place to stand.
She wants the aunties and her daughters and her sisters to be able to whāngai themselves back into existence as newborn babies, soft and gurgling, mouths wide open, spitting up the universe. (p. 272)
As is often the way with wahine Māori, Makereti utilises the page as a platform to lift fellow wāhine into the light as well. Dotted throughout This Compulsion In Us are responses to artists and artworks, references to academics, and the words of writers like Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, Karlo Mila, Patricia Grace; all of the people who are important to Makereti and who make up the whakapapa of her stories. She introduces us to the words and arms that have held her along her journey, and lets us into the web of connection that binds both her writing and her world. Just as she recognises the influence of her hapori and peers on her creative journey, I, and many others, will read this book and find that Makereti herself serves as that for us. He māreikura, he pou. Ngā mihi, whaea, mō tēnei taonga.
Featured image courtesy of Te Herenga Waka University Press.
