A review by ollie_again
Tracker by Alexis Wright

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.75

 

What was he like? He was mad. But I think that is the best way to be because even in your madness you can achieve a lot of stuff. It breaks down barriers and opens up doors. He had a big heart, and he gave his time and energy to a lot of people and his expertise which was short on the ground I suppose, but he always says that he knew everything and did everything. That was how mad he was.

Two things, one: this book is not 'just' about Tracker Tilmouth but about much more, and two: every biography should be written in this format. The collective memory of people rather than one person making one story, and I was surprised that there were contributions from Tracker himself too. Maybe this brick of a book is not the easiest thing to read but it definitely covers a lot and paints quite a full picture about Tracker Tilmouth. As it says on the cover, it's as much of a tribute to him as anything else.

I already mentioned that this book is about much more than just the title person. Because words used in connection to Tracker Tilmouth range from an Aboriginal leader, activist, visionary, political thinker or entrepreneur, you can imagine that his life was filled with people from all over and his experiences and dare I say adventures go in all different directions. So this book spans from Tracker being Stolen generation, over his academic avenue to him being the Director of Central Land Council. His successes and failures, good parts of his life and the not so good ones too. It would take ages for me to cover everything I learnt from this book, as currently I have about sixty sticky notes shoved into it and I'm in the middle of going through them. In the second half of the book, the focus is much more on the political and activist part of Tracker's life and if I'm being completely honest, sometimes I was a bit lost. I got the main points of Tracker's plan but in no way I can recall everything the book talks about. While I have some knowledge of Australian politics, it's nothing amazing and this book quite expanded my horizons.

I was taken aback by the fact I actually laughed too during this book. While Tracker's humour was sometimes not for me, some stories and notes about him made me chuckle. Overall, Tracker Tilmouth is a person I would describe (and I'm pretty sure one of the contributors did too) as bigger than life. It's difficult to wrap my head around one person living through so much, it was like Tracker had more hours in a day than the rest of us.

(Only slightly negative note is that the indexes at the end were confusing to navigate for me. They were alphabetical by surnames but with the first names still preceding the surnames, so searching for something was a bit messy. Maybe it's some norm I'm not familiar with but it took some time to get used to.)