Book details

Book description

Extraordinary insight into New Zealand womenà  s lives with gangs. In 1977 an idealistic young doctorà  s daughter, fresh out of university, knocked on the door of a run-down old house in inner-city Wellington. She was greeted by a woman in a Black Power T-shirt with metal in her nose and a spidery tattoo on her left cheek. à  Whaddya want?à  the woman growled. So began Pip Desmondà  s extraordinary time as a member of Aroha Trust, a work cooperative set up in the heady years of feminism, community activism and the first stirrings of the Maori renaissance. For three years this unique, unruly group of girls did physical à  menà  s workà  , lived together, and stood side by side against a backdrop of gang violence, police harassment and a society that didnà  t want to know. When the government changed the rules for relief work, Aroha Trust folded, but the friendships endured. Trust tells the womenà  s stories à Â- much of it in their own words à Â- with the respect and compassion that comes from a shared bond over 30 years. By turns angry, funny, hair-raising, tender, frightening and heartbreaking, the New Zealand Post Book Awards-winning Trust above all celebrates the womenà  s struggles to overcome their pasts and build a future for their children. As a unique insight into New Zealandà  s social history and a way to understand women and gangs, it is without peer. Pip Desmond is a freelance writer and journalist who has spent most of her working life in the community sector, both paid and unpaid. In 2000, she became Labour Minister Ruth Dysonà  s press secretary before doing the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2006, where she wrote the first draft of à  Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangsà  . The book recounts her experiences in her early 20s as a member of Aroha Trust, a work cooperative for gang women in Wellington, where she learnt to paint and renovate houses, cut scrub, and lay cats eyes on the city streets. Pip has also worked as a bus driver, barmaid, caterer and cleaner. She is married with three children and two beautiful grand-children. This is her first book.