emily’s Reviews > This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir > Status Update

The joy of becoming Pakeha is that it requires and nurtures a doubled being: a sense of shared humanity with Mãori as well as a deep sense of otherness, of the unknown and the unknowable. For me, it is within that fundamental tension - it's like the positive tension in a firm handshake, or a kind steady gaze between two people - that I feel truly alive, and where I make sense.