Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'

Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson

4 reviews

alyssapusateri's review against another edition

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adventurous inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

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nimrodgrrrl's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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questingnotcoasting's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

3.0

I have quite a few reservations about this but I am still glad I read it. I was really intrigued by Davidson's journey but she's not particularly likeable which very much affected the reading experience. She came across as quite prickly and seemed to be annoyed by people who were interested in her journey, which is a strange attitude to have in a memoir. She also never explains why she wanted to do the trip in the first place and while she's perfectly entitled to keep that private, I think I would have connected to the book more if I'd known where she was coming from. Particularly in that respect, I couldn't help but compare it to Wild by Cheryl Strayed (which I loved).
However I did learn quite a bit about Australian history and it made me realise I know almost nothing about Aboriginal peoples so now I think I'll look up more books about their culture and history.
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sophiexxjones's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

1.5

As a reader, I asked myself two questions while reading: what did she learn from the trip, and why did she do it in the first place? The first question was answered pretty easily all throughout the memoir — even before she sets off, she is already growing, changing, and learning. The second question, however, had a blurry answer. There was mentions of factors that pushed her out of society (sexism, racism, etc.) and the beauty of nature and independence that pulled her toward the trip, but I felt like I never got a straight answer as to “Why?”.

The writing style was shocking. It’s very “I did this, then I did this, then I did this,” and so on. It’s awkward and slow to read. The story itself is incredible (I cannot believe someone did that!), but it reads like a school camp recount, not a memoir.

The content in the book is also quite heavy. There are mentions of rape and sexual assault, which shows the sexist attitudes; there’s a lot of racism, including slurs (the author does not think this way, she’s writing about what others said); there’s many mentions of animal cruelty and animal death, which can be extremely upsetting to some. I had to put the book down on a few occasions because I was crying.

Honestly, if it wasn’t part of my school curriculum, I wouldn’t have finished this book. It was boring in some areas, due to the writing style, and some themes were quite confronting. Not to mention, the author has an insanely large white saviour complex throughout, making her insufferable at times. However, some of the descriptions of the Australian desert were beautifully written and the way she described and built up the people and animals in Tracks was amazing.
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