The Dr Timoti effect

Newsroom

a day ago

There is something special going on with The Unlikely Doctor, the new book by Dr Timoti Te Moke which has stunned the book trade by toppling Jacinda Ardern's memoir from the No 1 spot on the bestseller chart—in only its first week in the shops. The sales surge followed his momentous interview with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon. It attracted 14,000 likes on RNZ's Facebook and has led to a wave of invitations. The attraction is obvious–Te Moke's inspirational memoir tells of his journey from prison to becoming a doctor—but it also captures or rather interrupts a kind of zeitgeist. The national narrative right now is miserable, racist, broke. The Unlikely Doctor shines a light, holds out hope in these angry, punishing islands.
A free copy was up for grabs in the most recent ReadingRoom giveaway contest. Readers were asked why they wanted to read it. I was swamped with entries and a common factor among many was the theme of hope, salvation, the need to come up with something better than the current governance model of boot camps and benefit sanctions.
'I've spent 35 years helping people to read and write,' emailed Leigh Utting. 'For some of those years, I worked in prisons helping men to read and write. It was very difficult to find stories that spoke to them, spoke of them. I now help young apprentices (almost all men) and the lack is the same. If I had this book I could lend it to them, read it with them.'
Deb Nation shared a story with parallels to Te Moke's journey. 'I once interviewed a gangland rangatira who earned his brutal leadership skills from the NZ Army. He grew up on the East Coast. His parents booted him out as a kid, and he survived by his brother sneaking him food behind the local dairy.
'Coming south to military training he found a weekend family in the local gang, and soon rose to the top. After endless spells in prison he eventually realised his mana as gang leader wasn't as good as it had been. Systems were changing both inside, and out. He was reaching retirement age. He decided to go straight.
'He got a degree in psychology and started coaching rugby to young gang kids. His aim was to divert them into another way of life.
'I really liked this guy. His patient understanding and empathy for people, was beyond excellent. I'm sure I'd find the same for Dr Timoti.'
Reverend Michael Blakely kind of made it all about himself. He wrote, 'Having been in pastoral care ministry in South Auckland in the seventies, I served many struggling families from Māori and Pasifika backgrounds. I loved them and they loved me. As a school, parish and Health Care Chaplain, I got to know hundreds of whānau. I supported them on their journey towards wholeness. For a period, I was also chaplain to a well-known gang. The whakatauki that always governed my life was 'Act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with your God.''
Anne–Marie Patterson made it all about Dr Timoti. 'I work as an administrator, based in the Hunter Centre, for the Early Learning in Medicine (ELM) programme at the University of Otago where Timoti completed his 2nd & 3rd Years of his MB ChB degree.
'Timoti was always here in the Hunter sitting at a table studying. He spent hours and hours each day doing this but also was never too busy to sit and chat with others, or give you a smile as you passed by. I knew, as an older student, that he had an interesting past, but did not know the details.
'If I should win this book, it would be passed around the others here in our very special ELM community who knew Timoti, and then it would be placed in our Māori students study room as an inspiration to them.'
Almost every entry was about life in Aotearoa, about Aotearoa problems, wanting solutions for the broken societies within Aotearoa. But there was also an epic message from a reader who only gave his name as Abdul. He wrote, 'I was born in Kenya to Somali parents. Growing up in Kenya as a Somali in late eighties and early nineties was not easy. I was struggling with identity as I was not fully seen as Kenyan and on the other hand I was not fully accepted as Somali.
'To make matters worse the government of Kenya introduced a draconian law that targeted people of Somali ethnicity. We were targeted and threaten by the government. My father lost his business. We were subject to deportation to a country that we had no connection with. Somalia at that time was on the verge of a Civil War.
'The Kenyan government introduced what was infamously known as the pink card where people of Somali heritage were subjected to trauma and discrimination using flawed screening process to determine their Kenyaness.
'We were grateful to many human rights lawyers who were speaking up against this injustice. We managed to survive this ordeal even though the trauma is still with us. It is only this year that the Kenyan government abolished one of the draconian policy that came to be known as vetting of IDs.
'I experienced this injustice as a little boy and I saw how advocacy by human rights lawyers can make a difference.
'For many years I had this dream of becoming a lawyer, however life got on the way. Finally at the age of 48, I was admitted as a solicitor and a barrister of the NZ High Court in Auckland realising my long desire and dream.
'It is stories like Dr Timoti that inspire people who did not have the chance to realise their dream. It would be a privilege to have this book. This incredible journey of resilience and hope could inspire me to share my own story in the hope of inspiring many who feel lost and doubt themselves, which is all too familiar to me.'
A winner of the giveaway copy of The Unlikely Doctor will be announced in ReadingRoom on Friday.
The Unlikely Doctor by Timoti Te Moke (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.