This Pākehā Life
An Unsettled Memoir
This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pākehā. Every Pākehā becomes a Pākehā in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Māori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pākehā – and other New Zealanders – curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pākehā often experience in our relationships with Māori.
A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pākehā and Māori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.
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Endorsements
'I met Alison at the cauldron of political action in Auckland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this journey of discovery about ‘being Pakeha’ in Aotearoa New Zealand, she challenges herself to wrestle with the complexity of ‘Maori being’ and the unsettling idea of becoming Pakeha i roto i tenei ao rereke. This is an honest and disruptive interrogation of white privilege and power relations in Aotearoa.'
Ripeka Evans, social justice advocate
