National Identity

Description

An open, honest and at times intensely personal memoir about race, fatherhood, marriage, masculinity, fitting in, and the things that shape our national character.
Simon Bridges grew up as the son of a working-class Baptist preacher in Te Atatu, as the youngest of six children. In many ways he had a typical Kiwi upbringing, at a time when having little didn’t seem to matter much. Yet for Bridges, his was the life of an outsider: experiencing otherness for being Maori, and yet an otherness from other Maori; a Westie with a thick accent, trying to break into the upper reaches of society; distanced from his father, an ageing man in his own world. As a young politician, Bridges soon came to realise he was an introvert in an extrovert’s world, and a male leader who has never identified with New Zealand’s idealised version of the strong, laconic, rugby-loving man.