Words from the Top of the World

I'm still just the writer here....and the victim

2012-02-24T11:00:00.004-08:00

Hi Debby~

I hope the winter has been treating you well.

I wanted to let you know about a recent decision made by Barnes & Noble.
Marshall Cavendish has been offering exclusive sales opportunities to Amazon for some of their titles. By doing so, those books are not made available for customers of other retailers. Based on this move by Marshall Cavendish, Barnes & Noble has decided to pull their titles from in-store placement.

I was very disappointed to realize that your latest book would be impacted by this. However, I must support the companies decision in trying to make all books available to all customers. I am sorry that this has come to pass. I know My Name is Not Easy has been doing extremely well, and I personally feel it's presence will truly be missed on our shelves. We should still be able to order copies for customers requesting them as long as they are available in our warehouses.

It is the companies belief that if publishers making these decisions hear from both their authors and other retailers, then maybe they will rethink their decision to provide Amazon exclusivity on titles.

Please feel free to get back to me with questions or comments.

Sincerely,
~Renee

Renee Sands
Community Relations Manager
Barnes & Noble, Anchorage #2784
200 E. Northern Lights Blvd.
Anchorage, AK 99503

Yes, I am hurt. Incredibly hurt. For my first take on this latest round of industry politics, read my post: I'm Just the Writer Here.

Sinking nails into the edge of the boat

2012-01-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

My husband is watching this fishing show on TV where the guy has put nails around the edge of his boat to hold the different fishing lines. Apparently the nails keep the lines separate, keep them from getting tangled. My husband is impressed with this idea.

I've probably got it wrong, but it makes me think about writing. Writing is like fishing, after all. You drop in a hook, jiggle it around a bit. Let it sit. Come back to check, jiggle it some more. And yet some more. And, if you're lucky, pretty soon you'll be fighting the legendary big one.

You will be relentless, tough, focused---maybe even graceful---engaged in this dance with this fish.

Me? I'm with the guy on the fishing show. I like to have a bunch of story lines out at once. I'm not sure it would be a smart idea to secure them with nails though. Some of these story fish are very skittish. They only come when you pretend you're not interested, when you act like you're looking the other way, thinking of somethings else, ignoring them. If you turn to look too quickly, too soon, they disappear into the deep water, or dart off into the rocky part by the shore where you lose lures trying to catch them. You can't nail them down.

Actually, maybe it would be good to sink those nails into the writing boat. Then you could turn your back and feign disinterest. Which means I have driven this metaphor into a dangerously shallow water because what, exactly, is the craft equivalent for writers to "sinking nails into the edge of the boat?"

And the bigger question: why am I comparing writing to fishing? I don't even like to fish although I never admitted this to my big brother, Dave, who left us a little over a year ago. Dave used to take me out in the boat with him and basically plant fish on the end of my line.

Somewhere an old high school boyfriend has a photo of me as a five year old, holding a pike as tall as my little self. The one Dave always bragged about. I never did get that photo back.

Hey, maybe I was good at fishing and maybe this means I should be good at story fishing. Okay, it's a long shot. And if I am going to continue with this frivolity, I will have to go through the whole story equivalent of cleaning the fish and cooking it in a way that will make even non fish lovers say, "hey, this is good!"

Okay. I'd say that's the sound of the buzzer: Time's up. Back to work.

Oh. But wait. It really is amazing how one can struggle and struggle with something and then, with just one little change in the way you hold the rod, you are able, suddenly, to land the fish. Okay, never mind. That's silly. It's probably not even true about fishing. But it is true about writing and I have had some of those experiences this very week so I am happy.

For real now. Gone . . .

. . . fishing.

(Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)

Addendum to Arizona

2012-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

CNN blogged about it. I had to quit reading the comments. Some where just too hateful. Some of these uber-Americans need to take a look at American history and acknowledge it for what it is. There are some great and inspirational things in our history, but the basis of our claims are, well, pretty shaky.

Two students of mine--adult teachers--were chatting before class a while back. They were talking about immigration and expressing the, "they should all just go back to Mexico" perspective. I smiled at them and said, "I bet you two are grateful that they didn't think that way about your great grandparents."

One looked at me shocked. "Mine immigrated legally," he said, highly offended.

"Legal according to whose law?" I asked.

It is not a matter of debate. When our great grandparents immigrated "legally," there were a bunch of people, who had already claimed this land as theirs, standing on the shore, watching. No, not a bunch of people--there were nations of peoples.

Do people really have to be reminded of this, over and over? Would it even make any difference if they were? Sadly, it would not.

American Apartheid?

2012-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine--Jana Harcharek, Director of Iñupiat Education for the North Slope Borough School District--sent me a link about the affront to education that's taking place in Arizona:

American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL): Teaching critical thinking in Arizona: NOT ALLOWED

"This makes me especially grateful for the work we are doing with the Iñupiaq Learning Framework," Jana wrote. Me too. I'm president of the North Slope Borough School District Board of Education and I'm proud to say that unlike the school district in Arizona, which is shutting down its Mexican American Studies Program, we are not only teaching Iñupiaq Studies, we are creating a framework that will make "Iñupiaq studies" an integral part of academics on all levels. Unlike Tucson, Arizona, which is apparently afraid to teach alternative versions of history, we are actively creating materials that tell history from an Iñupiaq perspective.

I had been following this story on Debbie Reese's blog before Jana emailed me and I was, and am, shocked. Sherman Alexie referred to it as American Apartheid. I think that pretty well sums it up.

Aside from the obvious racism, aside from the fact that the powers that be in Arizona didn't care that the program was creating academic success among its Latino students, aside from the fact that this is the kind of thing that is gutting our educational system and sapping us of our strengths--aside from all of this, I am deeply disturbed about what it says about us as a country. This is not a version of America we can be proud of. This is not the land of the free; it's the land of the oppressors and the oppressed. This is a group of people who hold the balance of power saying, "our story is the right story and all other stories will be suppressed." Whatever ugly things students in that program may have been learning about American history, these things have just been validated.

It is such a serious affront to the truths we claim to hold as self-evident that it should be front page news, nationwide. Sadly, it is not.

I know this is a buzz phrase, but honestly, it makes me think of Nazi Germany.

Which in turn makes me think of my friend Ellen Levine's book Darkness over Denmark about the Danish resistance during World War II.

And in thinking of Ellen's book makes me want to share this, from the book's wonderful introduction:

Something unusual happened in Denmark during World War II: Hitler's plans to kill the Danish Jews failed. Like many American Jews, I grew up hearing stories of how Denmark saved its Jews. That Denmark chose to protect its Jews was an astonishing and extraordinary act. What happened, and why did it happen in Denmark and nowhere else?

Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century English political philosopher and member of Parliament, wrote, "The one condition necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I believe that this is the essence of this story. Evil did not triumph in Denmark because most Danes simply refused to allow it.

There were "good people" in countries throughout Europe who helped Jews during the Nazi period. But many more, when faced with the arrest and murder of their Jewish neighbors, said, "What could we do?" For Danes, one additional word made all the difference: "What else could we do?"

This is how I feel about the oppression happening in Arizona. One of the students, in fact, said that watching them box up those books and remove them from classrooms--which they did in the middle of class--was like looking at what had happened in Nazi Germany. We can't all just say, oh well, Arizona's a long way off and it's only one school district, only a small group of students, only one program.

No, I don't know what to do about it, either; I'm just a writer. But as they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. And it must be true, too. Those people down there in Arizona appear to be mighty afraid of a few words in a few books. They must see those books as truly dangerous. Those books must be subversive. They are literally tearing books out of the hands of students. They are actually monitoring classrooms to make sure teachers don't secretly continue teaching those books. Those books must truly be powerful.

We must keep writing, we must keep reading and we must keep teaching those books.

In fact I'm going to put a few of them on the syllabus of the class I teach at Ilisagvik College. We're a tribal college and the Tucson Unified School District can't touch us.*

I'm also ordering a few more of those books for myself. Matt de la Pena's Mexican White Boy is about a boy negotiating the line between being Mexican and being white--This could be the story of my own kids, negotiating the line between being white and being Iñupiaq. It's time I read it....

That's what I'm doing. It's a start. What are the rest of you doing?

***Added 1/24: The decision to shut down the MAS program and pull books from classrooms has it's roots in the Arizona state legislature, which threatened to pull a significant amount of money from the district if Tuscon did not comply to their reading of the law. What would I have done? In our district 75% of our budget goes to personnel. If we faced that kind of cut, we would have to make serious cuts to our teaching staff. I would challenge the state's interpretation of the law and seek an injunction.

On being where one belongs

2012-01-15T18:22:00.000-08:00

I liked Melinda Moustakis' National Book Award behind the scenes advice, especially the second bit of advice:

Find the Alaskans—they’re a friendly bunch.

This is true. When you're traveling in the lower '48 or beyond and you run into an Alaskan it's like running into an old friend. Actually, when an Alaskan runs into another Alaskan on the road a lot of times they are old friends, or at least old acquaintances or most certainly people who are acquainted with or somehow related to mutual old friends.

So it was great running into Melinda at the award ceremony. She was recognized by the National Book Foundation as one of the promising 5 under 35 writers and she was born in Fairbanks. I was from Barrow, was a finalist for the Foundation's National Book Award and had once lived in Fairbanks. Small world!!! We instantly had a lot to talk about. She was absolutely the only other writer in the whole room of hundreds who could relate to an experience I'd had two days earlier at a reading. I'd read a section from My Name is Not Easy that gets to the core of some fairly powerful feelings--powerful for me anyway. When I finished the reading, one young woman raised her hand.

"What's a snow machine?"

This is a snow machine, okay? In Alaska, snow machines have replaced dog teams as the accepted mode of transport in the roadless wilds. In terms of the scene I was reading, understanding this was critical. And yet the audience at Books of Wonder in NYC didn't know what a snow machine was.

Maybe it's like, a snow blower, they thought. I had just read what was supposed to be an emotionally charged scene in which the Inupiaq narrator is mourning the loss of a way of life. The presence of the snow machine is significant and yet it's significance was lost on the audience I was reading to. They were imagining the uncle and the long lost brother roaring around on a snow blower. It wasn't actually supposed to be a humorous scene but Melinda and I had a good laugh over it.

In Whale Snow, when I compared snowflakes to cotton grass the editorial staff at the Charlesbridge office in Boston envisioned sheets or maybe t-shirts, fluttering from the sky. But that's another story.

Cotton Grass
(My granddaughter, in the upper right hand corner of this blog is holding a bouquet of it.)

So I'm an Alaskan writer. My stories and images come from the Arctic. So deeply is this embedded in me that I generally don't think of how singular the imagery is until I find myself reading my work, far from home, in a place where these images, and the world they come from, simply don't exist.

How did this happen, I wonder sometimes. How did I become an arctic writer writing of things alien to much of the world?

I came north in 1974, fresh out of college, looking for adventure. (I know, I know, this makes me really old but forget about this for a minute. It really doesn't matter.) I traveled the Alcan highway, which was not then a highway, not by any stretch of the imagination and I rode in the back of a windowless van. By the end of that trip I thought maybe I knew exactly what it felt like to cross the country in a covered wagon.

Yes, like every other white person who came to Alaska in those days, I felt like a pioneer.

When I arrived in Fairbanks, it was springtime and it really was forty below (you don't know Johnny Horton, either? Okay, never mind.) The pipeline was in full boom and Fairbanks was wild. I lived in a log cabin heated by a 55 gallon drum laid sideways to make a wood stove. The lighting system was powered by kerosine and I traveled by dog team. I worked at a log cabin Greek restaurant where one of the Greek brothers who owned the joint threw knives at the wall if we didn't pick up our orders fast enough. (Hey, maybe he was related to Melinda! I should have asked.) The patrons were rough and tumble pipeline workers on R&R who dropped hundred dollar tips like kleenex. Every night after we closed down, we had Greek feasts replete with the best mousaka you ever tasted, washed down with wine.

I had a lot of adventures in Alaska in those days, some amazing and some, to paraphrase Doug Swieteck in Okay for Now, well, some are just none of your business.

And then I went north and lived with the Eskimos.

Hey that's a great book title, don't you think? . . . And Then I Went North to Live With the Eskimos. Actually, it was the Inupiat I went north to live with and from day one, their way of looking at the world just made sense to me.

For a long time, though, a part of me clung to the little shred of an idea that someday I would "go home." Or at least continue on in my travels.

Then one day, something strange happened. As my plane was landing in Barrow after a long trip, I looked out the window at the wide open tundra, red and gold and full of twisty rivers. I got off the plane, with ducks and geese flying overhead in wavering v's and went inside the terminal, where people were hugging me and saying welcome home! And I realized, suddenly, that I really was home, in every sense of the word. It's funny how this works.

Maybe I'll write a book about it someday.

We don't think of it much, but a place and its people, its landscape and its images--these become a part of one. I remember reading Norwegian poet Tarjei Vesaas' poem "Snø og Grandskoq" when I was 21 and a Norwegian-American living in Norway. I recognized, in a very personal way, its impetus. I grew up in country like the country Vesaas writes of. I loved and still love this country. I knew the feeling. Here's the translated version:

Snow and Spruce Forest

Talk about what home is--
snow and spruce forest
is home.

From the very start
it is ours.
Before anyone has told us
that it is snow and spruce forest,
it has its place in us--
and then it's there
the whole, whole time.

Waist-high drifts
around dark trees
--it's here for us!
Mixed into our own breath.
The whole, whole time,
though no one sees it,
we have snow and spruce forest.

Yes, the hill under the snow,
and tree upon tree
as far as you gaze--
wherever we are
we find ourselves
facing this.

And have in us a promise
about coming home.
Coming home,
going out there,
bending branches,
--and feeling so it flares in you
what it is to be where you belong.

The whole, whole time,
until it's extinguished
in our inland hearts.

Why this book and not that one?

2012-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

I think a lot about this question. Especially when it comes to recognition and awards.

The average reader probably doesn't think much about it, but we writers do. Most people probably assume that the best books rise to the top--the survival of the fittest and all that. But of course it's not that simple. It's not even always true, strictly speaking. I mean, think about it. There are something like 20,000 children's books published a year, give or take a few thousand. No one can possibly read them all. There are a few very influential awards and reviewers. This means that there are a few people, generally well read and respected, who make the decisions about which books deserve stars, awards and recognition. Award committees generally deal with only a very small pool of books--only those that have been nominated or submitted by the publisher, the writer, a librarian...

Some writers are blessed with publishers willing to pull out all stops to make sure their books get noticed and seen in all the right places. Some are not so well favored. Some writers are pros at self promotion and know how to create avid fans on the strength of their personalities alone. Some would rather have root canals.

Laurels go to those books that manage to come to the attention of reviewers and committees through promotion of one sort or another. And yes, awards and recognition are given to well written books, but these must first be books that appeal to the taste of the individuals in positions to give them recognition. There really is no way around this. Readers understand this, surely. How many times have you read, and been totally unimpressed, by a book that's received multiple kudos? Or adored a book that no one's noticed?

Think about what this means for books of color, if you will.

Where am I going with this? Well for one thing, I think we should all champion the books we love, especially the ones that don't receive as much attention as we think they should receive.

I just read Helen Frost's newest book, Hidden. What a beautiful cover--one that exposes our prejudices in a very subtle way over the course of the book. It's a compelling story: a mom goes into a quickstop to pay for gas. There's a gunshot and the little girl in the car dives to the floor, hiding. Someone gets into the car and speeds away. It's not the mom. The girl hiding is Wren. The daughter of the man driving is Darra. The two girls meet, years later at camp... I couldn't put this book down. It's taut and well written and goes to the core of things. Here's a book able to make kids say, whoa, who knew poetry could make you bite your nails? Frost has even invented a new poetic form, ready made for teachers. Will it find it's way into schools? I don't know. It will fare better than most because of Frost's reputation.

How many good books are out there there with nothing working in their favor, promotionally speaking?

We writers tend to worry about our books once they're published and out in the public. Our books are like our babies, after all, and we want everyone to love them. Our maternal--or paternal--instincts kick in and we want to protect them and defend them from attack but we can't. We count their stars, proudly. We view every star not given as a death toll. We've been known to spend inordinate amounts of time tracking their travels via Google searches, all of which does little to feed our writing life.

Yes, we're extremely gratified when our books receive recognitions and awards and sell well. But deep down inside, I think we all understand that a lot of what happens is happenstance. Deep down we know it would be better to ignore all of the hoopla, or lack thereof, and just keep following the whisper of the stories given us. Because in the final analysis, that's what it's all about.

Jo Knowles has posted a wonderful post on just this her blog. This resonated with me:

I want to get back to those pre-published writing days when, while in the writing mind, I was truly IN the writing mind. I wasn't thinking about what my agent or editor might think of the sentence I just wrote. I wasn't thinking about reviews. Or sales. Or best-of lists. Or snarky GoodReads.

I was thinking of story. Of character. Of words.

There was a purity to that time and I want to get it back.

Me too! For me, this means a New Year's resolution to severely curtail time on the Internet, to quit worrying about how my published books are doing, to quit taking what readers see or don't see personally--remembering that I cannot control what a reader brings to a book. And most of all, it means returning, fully, to the real work.

I think I'll start now.

Christmas Books, Eating Crow and a New Year's Resolution

2011-12-31T13:18:00.000-08:00

After posting my take on Amazon and the indies, my impulse buy from Bank Street Books in New York City came in quicker than my Christmas buy from Amazon, which was ordered much earlier than the signed book from Bank Street--and this despite the fact that the Amazon warehouse is closer to Alaska. So I'm eating a bit of crow today.

Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing arrived in time for Christmas. The Amazon order, which included Tim Tingle's Crossing Bok Chitto A Choctaw Story of Friendship & Freedom, did not. In fact my granddaughter and I were already reading Judy Blume when the Amazon order arrived, two days after Christmas. We took a break that night to read Tingle's book, which begins with:

There is a river called Bok Chitto that cuts through Mississippi. In the days before the War Between the States, in the days before the Trail of Tears, Bok Chitto was a boundary. On the one side of the river lived the Choctaws, a nation of Indian people. On the other side lived the plantation owners and their slaves. If a slave escaped and made his way across Bok Chitto, the slave was free. The slave owner could not follow. That was the law.

Crossing Bok Chitto is the story of a fearless Choctaw girl, Martha, who ventures beyond the Choctaw boundary despite her mother's warnings, and a slave boy, Little Mo, who learns the power of faith as he takes on losing odds to save his family. I had a lump in my throat the size of Mississippi as I read the last lines:

The descendants of those people still talk about that night. The Choctaws talk about the bravery of that little girl, Martha Tom. The black people talk about the faith of that little boy, Moses, but maybe the white people tell it best. They talk about the night their forefathers witnessed seven black spirits, walking on the water--to their freedom.

Wow. That's about all I can say. Wow. So many good books, so little time. This one, which was a great choice for Christmas, incidentally, goes onto the list for the class I teach this semester at Ilisagvik College: ANS 293 Alaska Native/Native American Children's Literature. It's beautiful book, too:

Ready for that New Year's resolution? How about a resolution for schools across the nation? November is Native American Month. You probably didn't know that. It's also Thanksgiving. You probably did know that. Yes, I know, it's a long way off, but let's think ahead and make November 2012 the time to make a permanent paradigm shift in children's literature. Let's teach the true story of Thanksgiving and replace all the books with Indian stereotypes with books like this one, books that tell the real stories of this country's First Peoples. The real stories are way better, anyhow.

Deal?

Amazon Buys Marshall Cavendish: I'm just the writer here

2011-12-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

On the surface, a union between book publishing and bookselling is unholy marriage. Everyone understands this, don't they? I’m a writer and we writers have been singing this chorus since time immemorial. Writers tend to champion free-standing publishers and independent booksellers. We all have indie buttons on our blogs or websites. We know there is nothing in the literary universe that beats the power of passionate human beings promoting the books they love. The power of the indie is that they have the freedom to carry a book for no reason other than somebody at the store loves it. Some editors—a diminishing number—have the same freedom. Fortunately, I found one of them. She edits books for Marshall Cavendish.

So here's my slightly different take on the Amazon buyout of Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books--a few points that none of the morally indignant people, who are talking the way I normally talk, are managing to mention. Please note, if you haven’t already read the press release of this buyout that was picked up everywhere, my young adult book, National Book Award Finalist My Name is Not Easy, was one of the 450 titles acquired by Amazon. And please know, right up front, that I heard of this transaction only moments before you did. I was sent the press release at the same time it went out to the world, which was right before it was published in the source where you first read about it. Did I have any say over this business deal that affects me on a very fundamental level? No, of course I didn't. That's how the writing business works. I sell rights to a publisher. What the publisher does with the rights I sell is its business, not mine.

We all understand—and many of us have experienced first hand—the unhealthy influence that the big chains have had on the industry and on the cause of diversity in literature. Word has it that if Barnes and Noble says they won’t sell a certain kind of book, some publishers won’t buy it. Is this true? I don’t know. I do know that you can go into pretty much any Barnes an Noble in the country (except for the one in Anchorage, Alaska, bless their hearts—specifically the heart of book lover and book seller Renee Sands) and my books won’t be there, not even the book that was just acquired by Amazon, the one named a National Book Award finalist. Ditto, it appears, in the bulk of the independents across the country. But my books have always been available on Amazon because Amazon operates on a different model. They don't let selected buyers pick and choose. If it's in print--or even if it's out of print--they have it or they can link you to someone who does.

Now, here’s my personal experience. I spend ten years writing a book, a book of my soul, one I was driven to write. Some people tell me it’s a good book, maybe even an important book, but I don’t really care for any of that. I'm writing it because I have to, because I'm a writer and that’s what writers do—we write the stories that speak to our souls, looking only at where we have succeeded and where we have failed, determined to do better this time and even better next time. Happily, in my case, my book is published and a small group of other writers sees fit to name it a finalist for one of the top awards in the industry. Suddenly lots of people want my book. My small publisher, who has never had a National Book Award finalist, goes into a frenzy trying to get the book reprinted and into bookstores. I’m patient with them. They get a reprint done fast and the book is out there. Or so I think. Then I start getting reports from friends all over the country: no one can find my book. In NYC, not one Barnes and Noble carries it. Ditto in LA and Boston. Two weeks ago, my husband, who is president of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, had ten minutes with President Obama. I didn't have a copy of the book to send with him so he decided to pick one up in DC. The book, after all, is his story. He went to five bookstores there and nobody had it. He finally found a copy at a used bookstore. Yes, President Obama got a used copy of my book.

This was all very frustrating. Why wasn't Marshall Cavendish getting my book out there? To everyone who told me they couldn't find my book anywhere, I had only one response: it's available on Amazon. Then I learned: Barnes and Noble stores in the major markets aren't buying it. Does it matter that My Name is Not Easy was a National Book Award finalist? Apparently not. Why is this? I don't know. Is it too regional? Too culturally specific? As one Good Reads reviewer said of my first book, Blessing's Bead, is it a case of, "I'm sure if you're into inuits and whatnot you might dig it. Just not my schtick."

So here’s my confession. I shop Amazon. I live in the northernmost community in the country. It's not on any road system. It's a $500 dollar plane ride to the nearest bookstore. I supported one of Alaska's largest independents before they went under. I got schools to do book fairs through them. I did events with them. I shopped with them. But here's the truth: half the time they didn't have the book I wanted and told me it would take two weeks to get it and the other half of the time their shipping was about a week slower than Amazon's, despite the fact that they were closer to me geographically. Just how far does one go in the name of loyalty?

And now, people are threatening to boycott Marshall Cavendish because of the Amazon buyout. To all those independents who say they're going to happily return all of their Marshall Cavendish stock I say this: Hey, I’m the victim here! I had no say over any of this. I just wrote the best book I could and followed my editor to a small publisher who treated me well. Like every other book ever written it probably isn’t everyone’s schtick. Written from within a little known cultural context, it had an uphill battle from the start. Then it got a lucky break. Okay—no. I don't think it was entirely lucky: I worked for it. I worked all my life for it. These independent booksellers who are returning their stock may think they're punishing Amazon, but in fact, it's me and the writers behind those other 449 titles who being punished. And what about readers, readers like me, who love shopping at small independent bookstores? Is it fair that we’re being denied access to books, not on the merit of the book itself, but only because of industry politics?

So now the rank and file is calling Amazon evil. Yes, the price-checking AP was a bit unsettling, but don't shoppers have the right to price check? Don't venders have the right to meet or beat anyone's price? Does it make me happy as a writer that people want to buy my books cheap? Not particularly, but I'd rather see my books in the hands of 5000 readers, at a reduced price than 500 at full price. Does it suit me as a buyer? Actually I am not sure why anyone would want to go into a bookstore to find a book and then go through the hassle and delay involved in ordering it online. If one is inclined to order online in the first place, why go into a bookstore to check out the books? First chapters and previews are available on Amazon. Is it unethical to read a book in a bookstore and buy it online? Somebody referred to this as intellectual shoplifting. Shoplifting, intellectually, from whom? The bookstore? Does the bookstore own the intellectual property rights to my work? Is it unethical stand in a bookstore, read an entire book, and then walk out and not buy it anywhere? It’s not a happy thought but, in the final analysis, the book has to sell itself. The book has to grab the reader and say: take me home. All we writers are asking is that booksellers give our books a chance, a fighting chance, to do so.

People can go ahead and say what they please about Amazon but at least they’re not killing our books by not selling them. Amazon is very democratic this way: they sell everything. Yes, the move into publishing is a game changer. But then again, maybe the game needed changing.

I made an interesting phone call the other day. I dialed in to Book Talk Nation to listen to a conversation between Judy Blume and Rachel Vail sponsored by Bank Street Books through a program administered by the Author’s Guild. I hadn’t intended to buy a book, but by the end of the program I just knew I had to get another copy of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing—an autographed copy for my granddaughter. As I went through the checkout process—online—I mused, again, about how vital it is to have passionate people, talking about books in an open forum. Here was a wonderful example of an indie doing what indies do best and doing it in such a way that even I, in a breathtakingly remote corner of the world, could participate. Now, here was a model worth emulating.

My plea, as a writer who wants to see more rather than fewer book people, is this: come on indies, make a new game for the new millennium. Independent doesn't have to mean insular. Work together to build something core to the cause of literature, something that supports our books--all of them. Something only real people, real book people, can do.

The National Book Awards, a parting shot...then back to writing

2011-12-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, you say, enough already on the National Book Awards. Let us move on, shall we? And yes, I am deeply into a new project. But I wanted to share this picture of me with one of the NBA judges, a writer I admire, Nikki Grimes.

And speaking of new projects, which I will do later, check out Justine Larbalestier's post about Writing Liar with Scrivener:

"In the acknowledgements of Liar I wrote the following: “Without Scrivener this book would most likely not exist.” Ever since people have been asking me to please explain. Here, at long last, is my explanation."

Interesting. I use Scrivener, too. It's a writing program that gives me some freedom to play with new writing, to practice what writer Alison McGhee once referred to as the lego block technique of drafting--you move pieces of writing around until you find what works where. Working with bits of a book is like working with colors on your palate. Which color adds depth or clarity to the whole when paired with another? Which is needed here? And here?

It's also like working with building blocks: which block of story needs a bit more support? What if I add this block, here?

Of course, a lot of it is intuition. With Scrivener, I can follow a more intuitive process. I can say, Why Qilaa needs to do something here. Maybe she needs to do something with that rock she found on the beach... So I label a section on Scrivener Qila and the Rock and there it sits until one day it hits me, no pun intended, and I know what she's going to do with that rock. So I write it.

Writing a first draft is not at all a linear process for me. How about you?

Okay, here's the photo, courtesy of my daughter Aaluk. I like it.

Nikki posted a wonderful NBA reflection on her blog. Her book Bronx Mascarade was a book I studied when I decided to make My Name is Not Easy a multi-voiced telling.

Diversity in publishing--a conversation worth having

2011-11-28T23:04:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting conversation on diversity in publishing going on over at Zetta Elliot's blog Fledgling that start's off with a look at numbers of black YA writers published in the US and blossoms into an important discussion about publishing and diversity. And we haven't even begun to think of what these statistics mean for readers, our growing base of multiracial, multicultural readers who are looking for books that speak to their experience. I think a lot about "multicultural" writing (which seems like jargon, somehow) and about lens shifting in our increasingly multicultural world. I did a guest blog on the topic on Cynstations recently. But I was really taken by, and wanted to share this interview with Nigerian/UK children's writer Atinuke, posted on Zetta's blog. I am always interested in the issue of negotiating cultural boundaries. It's where we live, isn't it?

And, just because, I am sharing a picture of my granddaughter, Josie, advertising my Alma Mater.

Back to the Real Work

2011-11-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

I want to say that it's the day after Thanksgiving because we ate turkey yesterday. On Thanksgiving we went to the church for the Thanksgiving feast where we ate niqipiaq. So now I am thinking of that word, niqipiaq, which people translate as Inupiaq food--specifically the kind of meat native to the arctic: whale, seal, caribou, ducks, geese. But when you think of it, as I am doing now, niqi means food and when you add -piaq onto the end of a word it means real or genuine. So I take niqipiaq to mean the food geniune to the land you live on--real food. Whatever your dietary bent, you have to agree that it is healthiest to eat niqipiaq, right? The food of a specific land prepares you for life on that land. And in the arctic, we have to admit, this is no small thing.

Yes, I am back home after all the hoopla of the National Book Award. I meant to take pictures so I could come home and blog about it, but the only picture I remembered to take was the parting shot--flying out of Barrow--and that wonderful arctic winter sunset that I didn't know enough about photography to capture, in all it's glory.

The rest was an overwhelming blur of activity and honor. My friend Helen Frost had warned me that it would be somewhat disruptive. Yes, writing is such a solitary activity that things of the limelight represent the antithesis to it, I think. Rita Williams-Garcia told me to "enjoy my rah rahs" and advised me to "wear them like tiaras." I tried. I really did.

So people not of the Arctic always say they can't imagine how they would survive three months of darkness. I always say, well it's not like pitch black. There's a dusky period and there are the stars and the moon and the northern-freaking-lights, for heaven's sake. Please. Then I say something about biological clocks and how they tick differently for different people in different parts of the world, different stages of life, different seasons. I guess my clock is not set differently than yours, I tell them. Then I think to myself: Three months? No way, I don't think it's three whole months. Not whole months. We measure all measure time differently. Winter is a time of hibranation and gestation. These are artistic terms, you understand, and they are critical parts of the process. I like winter.

So I like being home, in the dark time, digging deeper and deeper still into the real work. See you in a few...whatever you may call them. And it's not really dark, see:

But I am happy, nonetheless, to be back north in the heart of the dark season digging into the real work as Gary Snyder calls it. Savaagpiaq, to coin a phrase, which probably makes no sense whatsoever in Inupiaq. Why would one engage in work that isn't real? But we do, of course.

But wait... it is a word, George says. Savaagpiaq. He translates it as heartfelt work. The real work, in other words. Savaapiagniaqtuna. I am going to really work now. Never mind my spelling, bad in both languages.

Quyanaqpak!

2011-10-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

I suspect that my life has been forever changed by the incredible honor that was bestowed upon me when I was named a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award.

When I got the call, I was lying in my bed (which doubles as my office) here in Barrow, Alaska. They told me not to share the news until after the announcement, which was a good thing because I was too overwhelmed to be coherent for some time after receiving that call. I was also a tad nauseous--it was so huge, so amazing, so ultimately daunting that I had a hard time processing it. I write from a place as far removed from the media centers of the world as it is possible to be. And I write from a culture that is little known beyond the Arctic. I’ve lived here the majority of my life—it’s what I know and love.

All I ever wanted to do was to write to the heart of my experience, living here, to give those readers willing to join me an opportunity to see what I’ve seen. This recognition means the world to me.

This cake, made by North Slope Borough School District Food Service Manager Bob Eason, was waiting for me, after our last school board meeting, as part of a reception to honor newly elected school board member Amos Nashookpuk. I thank Kathy Ahgeak for capturing the moment so well with this picture!

I like this picture. I like it not because it flatters me more than most pictures (I take lousy pictures) but because when I look at myself, I see an aging woman who looks a lot like my mother--and I am suddenly gratified by this and by the fact that my mother's belief in me, my husband's belief, have just been validated in such a huge way. I am grateful for all that I have learned, living in this amazing place, most especially for the worldview I saw first in looking at life through my husband's eyes. And I am incredibly grateful for the fact that I have learned, as I age, how to trust in that inner wellspring of spiritual light that surrounds us all if we will let it. All is very light right now.

Before I was named an NBA finalist, I had conceived of a blog tour to advertise the release of My Name is Not Easy. I should have advertised the tour on this blog before the fact rather than after, but so it is. Here are the blogs I visited, before I became overwhelmed by life:

Through the Tollbooth

49 Writers

Wasilla, Alaska, by 300

Writing with a Broken Tusk

There were several other blogs that I was to have appeared on, and will appear on later, but I was, for a few days, having a hard time stringing words together, much less writing blog posts. I look forward to getting back to what we writers call the real work.

With much gratitude, thank you. Quyanaqpak,

The view from my front door...

2011-10-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

The owls arrive on winter

wings, with messages we can't

decipher, watching us

with steady yellow eyes

as if

they know something

not at all

human.

Oh! This reminds me of Nancy White Carlstrom's wonderful book, so quintessentially Alaskan: Goodbye Geese illustrated by Ed Young, a book that should never have gone out of print:

...When geese spread their wings in the sky

and fly honking south,

winter hears

and winter comes.

Goodbye

Geese.

Yes, winter is here at the top of the world where we are all happy to welcome its pristine whiteness, its healing silence.

The connection lies between stories, across cultures . . .

2011-09-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

…and my husband tells the stories; I’m only the scribe. This is what I tell people, anyhow, and the people who know us understand what I mean. It’s not entirely true, of course. I’m more than a scribe. I’m a writer, after all, which means that my work, even when it includes all the stories I’ve heard throughout my life, is still, in aggregate, me. George’s stories are now my stories, too. His extraordinary tales, especially those which fall outside of the frame of reference of my birth culture, are true. This is the spirit in which he tells them and it is the spirit in which I receive them. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said he couldn’t write his stories until he saw them the way his grandmother saw them, as completely natural. I get this. I straddle a cultural line in my writing and for me, that line is erased by the stories. As soon as my words hit the page, though, I understand that for some people, the line remains and will always remain. Sitting on the edge of it, I sometimes think it’s my job to translate, from one side to the other, but it’s not true. My job is to write across that line as though it’s not there and let others negotiate it as best they can—hoping that for them, too, the line is erased.

George says the English language is backwards and that the Inupiat, in learning to understand English, had to learn to think backwards. So the impetus for the post is at the end—backwards, perhaps, but I will get there. Read on.

I think of stories, of these astonishing and unbelievable stories and the way George tells them and I am reminded of the character of Edward Bloom, in the movie Big Fish, who lies on his death bed, telling his life story to his son. “Most men will tell you a story straight through. It won’t be complicated, but it won’t be interesting, either,” Bloom says. I always cry at that point at the end of the movie, where the characters we had assumed were Bloom’s inventions, all show up at his funeral, to honor him. The power of story.

George’s stories are like that. A geologist by training, he says the world has seen seven ice ages. His evidence comes from all over the place, from some wild places, in fact, but his primary source is oral history passed on from generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation as story.

It’s where I start my new book, My Name is Not Easy:

The elders say the earth has turned over seven times, pole to pole, north to south.

Freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing,

flipping over and tearing apart.

Changing everything.

We were there.

We were always there.

They say no one survived the ice age but they’re wrong.

There were seven ice ages and we survived.

We survived them all . . .

I think of ice ages and I think of global warming and, from an entirely personal and probably insignificant level, the idea scares me: what will become of the people indigenous to the Arctic when the ice melts? What will become of all the Arctic expertise, contained in the language, when the Arctic is gone? It feels like a death too deep to fathom--but George laughs: it’s happened before and will happen again. The earth turns over, he says, and it takes three days for the migratory animals, the birds, the whales, to make shift. The people who know how to, will survive. The knowledge will transfer.

This, in fact, is the impetus for this post, the place were this small story of mine starts:

I am scrolling through Facebook and someone has posted a video. It speaks directly to the stories George has always told in that way that makes me catch my breath, makes me sit up and say: yes, all things are connected; I’ve always known it. There is no line to straddle; the lines are all connections and connection is forged through story...

Here's the video, make of it what you will:

The end of the American Dream...

2011-09-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

I'm a writer and like every writer I am also a voracious reader. In other words, I love libraries. I'm also a school board president and when I think of it, the link between education, libraries, reading and writing is so obvious it hardly seems worthy of comment. What I have never been able to understand, though, is why so many people fail to make a connection between reading and librarians, the kind of librarians who generate an excitement for books that turns kids into lifelong readers and learners.

I've seen a lot of great librarians in my day but as the economy leads us to look deeper and deeper for budget cuts, school districts across the country are cutting librarians at an alarming rate. It feels like we're on a big ship headed for disaster and no one is able to change the course. Some of us keep running for the steering wheel but a whole bunch of people are blocking the way--good people faced with hard choices. The argument seems to be, "better a librarian than a teacher." To me, that's like saying "better I lose my lungs than lose my heart." You need both to survive. A library without a librarian is just an empty shell. I know, I've walked through a lot of empty libraries in recent years. Kids don't live there any longer and reading doesn't happen in them. I think National Book Award finalist Kathleen Duey says it rather nicely:

"As long as six years ago, speaking/appearing in schools, I began to hear about librarians being fired. Schools with no trained librarians became the norm in some states--or there might be one librarian serving 6-10 schools, spending half the day driving. EDUCATION is being gutted to meet budget cuts. Really? Do we want to create a low wage-earning underclass? Because this is how you do it. You make education--even a self-guided/public library education like my own-- harder and harder for people of limited means. You take away the level playing field of good public education. You let the universities charge fees very few can afford. This dismantling of public education and public libraries is underway and growing. And it is the the worst betrayal of the American Dream I can imagine. "

Read Kathleen's blog HERE.

Anyone who doubts the connection between librarians and reading scores might also be interested in this study: Something to Shout About: New research shows that more librarians means higher reading scores. Food for serious thought, I'd say.

A Wedding in the Mountains

2011-09-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

August 27, a perfect day for a wedding in Anaktuvuk Pass. The tundra was gold and red and glorious, the sun was shining, and the sky promised to go on forever and ever.

Reverend Mary Ann Warden flew in from Kaktovik for the wedding. Payuk, Isabel and our Josie were united.

Two families became one: the Edwardsons and the Nays.

Cakes, niqipiaq, good company...

...and a new son!

In the end, we took argos up into the mountains for a bonfire in the setting sun and the next morning we flew home, through mountains full of caribou and sheep, our bags bursting with berries and paniktaq. Quyanaqpak to our new ilas!

photos by Nasugrak.

photo by Debby

Starting Backwards, or random memories of the newest book

2011-05-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

Six a.m. on an otherwise beautiful day in Anchorage. George is still sleeping. I wake up early, ready to work, but when I turn on the computer and open the file, I discover I've saved one of the chapters of this book--a book I've been working on for an embarrassingly long time--under the same file name as the entire 245 page manuscript.

After a moment of hyperventilation, I remember I had saved an earlier version at the end of the previous month. I’ve only lost a few weeks’ worth of work. I'll survive.

We’re staying at Hickle House, which is part of Providence Hospital, a peaceful place nestled in the woods and crowned by mountains with decks outside and a fireplace within. It’s a place for healing, which is why we’re here. George has had a season of medivacs, emergency rooms and surgery. We need healing.

He sleeps in an easy chair at the end of the bed where I work, his breathing still labored. I go to work recreating one of the chapters of this book, one I had been especially happy with.

I still remember the structure of it—a rather nice balancing act of conversation and memory, strung along a narrow wire of action that seemed to work. I can recreate it. But writing is a process full of serendipity and as I set about, in the still darkened room, to rewrite something I thought was good, I find something better.

There’s a lesson in this, I imagine.

George wakes with a start. He’s had a nightmare. He was trying to save something—he didn’t know what it was but whatever it was, he was about to lose it.

I tell him about the file lost on the computer. He laughs and says, “Are we really that connected?”

I nod. Yep.

Working with him asleep beside me always stirs my memory, somehow, tapping into those subconscious stores that enable me to write stories that are both his stories and mine. Like this one, My Name is Not Easy.

Perhaps it is just the way a writer’s mind works, but for me, everything is connected.

First there is the connection of being at Providence, Anchorage’s Catholic hospital, because George grew up in a parochial boarding school, the school that started this story.

And then there’s a connection in being at Hickle House because Hickle was the Governor of Alaska when the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act was born. The Interior Department had put a freeze on state lands until Alaska Native claims were settled and Hickle opposed it. Oil had been discovered in Pudhoe Bay and the state wanted it-all of it.

And there’s also, suddenly, a connection with the TV, which George has just turned on: Mel Gibson, as Maverick saying, “It’s their fault for being on our land before we got here.”

All of these things fit into this book somehow, trust me.

Normally when we come to Anchorage for medical visits we go to the Alaska Native Medical Center, but not this time. This time I transferred George from ANMC to Providence. ANMC had tried and failed at the surgery and they wanted to try again. I refused to give them a second chance. He was drugged and didn’t know what was going on. He thought I was being difficult--and it was hard moving away from ANMC, a place, so full of friends and family and familiar faces. Harder still as the last nurse there treated him like a national treasure and the one before that—a gentle Indian from the lower 48—had braided his long gray hair with such loving reverence that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he would not react well to seeing his hair in braids.

Providence was scary at first. No Native faces. No wonderful Native artwork. A tiny sterile room. Then the nurse came in—a veteran Catholic nurse who knew George’s favorite nun from Copper Valley School, the nun who used to cook the rabbits he caught in the woods near Glenellen.

And now, here we are, recovering at Hickle House and eating chicken instead of rabbits. Hickle’s gone and the Catholics saved the day, this time, and I saved my book, so life is good.

George reaches over and pulls the curtain open.

“Hello Anchorage,” he says.

“Hello,” I answer, my voice falsetto.

“You don’t look like Anchorage,” he says. “You look like Barrow.”

“In your dreams,” I tell him and we both laugh.

The Birth of a Book . . .

2011-04-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

The cover of my new book is up on Amazon! This is a book born of the stories my husband tells of his years away at boarding school, a book born, as well, of who I am as a writer and as a human being. It was a book I knew I had to write. It will be released in October so it's time to start preparing for the birth. I will be blogging from time to time to document the journey. For now, the blurbs are in and I am thrilled.

From William L. Iggigruk Hensley, author of the wonderful Fifty Miles from Tomorrow:

Debby Edwardson’s “My Name is Not Easy” brought me to tears as I remembered the loneliness and confusion when I left home for boarding school thousands of miles from my home and family in Arctic Alaska. This young adult novel evokes a time and place in the Alaska Native world that is important to remember—when far off governments and powerful institutions made decisions that began to change our world—and the adjustments we had to make to survive. It is an excellent work of fiction with important truths to be remembered.

And from award-winning children's writer and poet Helen Frost:

We think of the Civil Rights Movement as something that happened in the south, but here is a book from the far north that shows a different, and equally important, side of it. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have been an unbearably dark and difficult story, but Debby Dahl Edwardson brings to it such deep love and intelligence that the reader experiences not only the anger and tears of these memorable characters, but also their joy and ultimate triumph. The words soar off the page and then, beautifully, bring us home.

And this one, from my dear mentor Ellen Levine:

My Name Is Not Easy, Debby Dahl Edwardson has given us an extraordinary tale of love, betrayal, and above all, survival, as a group of young Alaskan Natives are transplanted from their home villages to a parochial boarding school in the Alaskan wilderness. Through their stories, Edwardson reminds us that the landscape we see is also the landscape of our soul, whether arctic tundra or urban canyons. This is a novel that, like landscape, marks a reader’s soul forever.

Of course one expects something good from a friend and mentor. It's like your mother--they have to say something nice. But this one is from someone I have never met, talked to or even emailed. A wonderful surprise from National Book Award nominee Howard Norman:

One of the rewards of a work of literature as imitable, haunting, and deftly composed as My Name Is Not Easy, is that it permanently takes up residence in one’s life. Debby Edwardson writes with perfect verisimilitude. The cultures of First Peoples in Alaska makes me think of the French poet Eduoard saying, "There is another world, but it is in this one." Tough minded, full of hardscrabble humor, My Name is Not Easy is old-fashioned storytelling that – with fierce love and first-hand knowledge -- brings beautiful, harrowing, courageous lives along the arctic ocean to readers. This book deserves all great good fortunes.

Oh do let's hope he's right!

BREAKING NEWS: My Name is Not Easy has been picked up by the Junior Library Guild!

Snow Day in the Arctic

2011-02-25T16:31:00.000-08:00

Is this a redundancy? Sure, we get lots of snow in the arctic--even full-blown blizzards--but we rarely get snow days. When a blizzard arrives with winds gusting up to 40 mph, however, visibility is reduced to zero, the roads are annihilated and everything shuts down. Even the planes, our only connection with the outside world, have quit flying.

And I love it! The snow envelopes one in a way that feels almost holy. We reconnect with our loved ones, freed from the burdon of all those important responsibilities that suddenly become meaningless with no means of outlet. Think of it as a retreat, a naturally induced retreat. Like hibernation. I've always compared the dark of an arctic winter to hibernation. And believe me, hibernation is a great thing for one who has burnt up major stores of energy frolicking in the midnight sun. Even more so for those past the age of frolicking.

Ah well, at least we still have our gas heat and electricity. At times like this I think fondly of the wealth of coal we have stored beneath the house. And then, in the next breath, I consider the fact we have nothing to burn it in. Perhaps I should research coal-burning stoves on the Internet.

At least we still have the internet! Which affords me my laugh of the day:

I'm teaching an online course in Alaska Native/Native American Children's Literature through Ilisagvik College and one of my students (a teacher in Atqasuk, a small, remote village) posted a message today about doing a class project where the kids re-interpreted Winnie the Pooh for reader's theater, setting it in arctic Alaska. All the animals became arctic animals except for Eeyore, who became, appropriately, "an animal that was brought to Atqasuk and never got a flight home."

Hey it could happen to any of us. It happened to me over 30 years ago. But then, I am not Eeyore.

The essential question of the day is this: when fate keeps you locked inside your den in the arctic, how will you respond?

I'll just write my way out.

Oh wait, what about the electricity? Should I worry? Check my stock of paper and pens, you say? Write the old way? Never! Now you have truly crossed the line....


On a clear day you can see forever . . .

This, however, is not a clear day. This is my driveway, 30 minutes ago. No, that's not the car, silly. That is randomly drifted snow. No--wait--my husband is correcting me: snow does not drift randomly. Snow drifts very specifically and you will most certainly want to understand exactly what this means and how it works as a navigational aide when you find yourself lost on the tundra on a day like this.

A Rare Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

We’re cooking the turkey today.

We always do turkey the day after because on Thanksgiving day we go to church for the Feast.

No, it’s not a turkey feast.

The Thanksgiving Day Feast in Barrow is part of the annual cycle of events celebrating a successful whaling season and sharing, with the entire community, the fruits of the catch. People don’t stand in long lines waiting to dish bits of food onto paper plates. They sit in pews, with empty coolers and boxes and are served by pairs of servers toting huge pots of soup and tubs of frozen meat and maktak and fish, listening to impromptu performances. Participants leave with enough food to stock their freezers for weeks. I wrote about it in Blessing’s Bead.

Aktikaaq, ready to serve.

The timing of Thanksgiving this year was particularly fortuitous for me because I was presenting at NCTE/ALAN in Orlando on Monday and didn’t get home until Wednesday night.

I presented with fellow children’s writers Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Zetta Eliott, Neesha Meminger and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. It was the first time I’d met any of these writers in person although I've been in contact with Lyn for some time and have often quoted Zetta’s wonderful online ruminations about the colonization of the imagination. The theme of the ALAN conference this year was, Looking for the Real Me: the Search for Self in Young Adult Literature. Our panel was entitled “Looking for the Real Me on the Hyphen: Stories of Migration and Return.”

It was a good panel, but I was glad to return home.

I think most writers are, by nature, solitary creatures and it’s s bit daunting to be in such huge crowds where one is expected to promote one’s work. More so for someone like me, whose work comes from a place and culture so far removed from the mainstream. I often feel, at these events, like an immigrant from a tiny and fragile planet, wondering how my singular stories fit into the mass market, wondering how they can ever be marketed and find readers. These are not good thoughts.

So it’s good to sit in the midst of our huge Barrow family on Thanksgiving Day, immersed in the rich and rare sense of shared community one always feels here. The church is packed with people, dressed in fancy parkas and fur boots, frilly dresses and even suits. We pass our bags back and forth to servers who fill them with meat and maktak until our boxes can hold no more. The couple sitting next to us is of our generation. I share our salt with them, as they’ve forgotten to bring theirs and they share their paper towel with me as I have none. Sitting with a granddaughter on my lap, I feel overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude: I am thankful that the universe has somehow contrived to place me here, in this small beating heart of a rich and unique culture.

Thoughts of book marketing are as remote as the moon. The only writing thought I think is the same one I always think at events like this: if I were able to express in writing even a single breath of this experience, it would be enough. I would be grateful.

That’s when my neighbor leans over and says, “Debby, I read your book. I couldn’t put it down.”

What else is there?

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

My granddaughter Josie, sings with the kids.

And do check out Oyate’s Deconstructing the Myths of “the First Thanksgiving.” Sometime the mass story is not the real story.

See, Debbie Reese's blog, American Indians in Children's Literature, for more articles about the indigenous American perspective on Thanksgiving.

Zetta's statement, which I often quote is: “For many people of color, not seeing oneself in a book, over and over again, leads to a lasting colonization of the imagination.”

That's why I write these books, even if they don't have mass market appeal--to decolonize imaginations, one at a time.

(I enjoyed the irreverent Gary Paulson, dressed in a flannel shirt, suspenders and a baseball cap at the ALAN reception. And besieged by fans. When I told him I was from, Alaska he talked about his Alaskan home and his dogs and looked around: "Too damn many people here," he said.

And of course it was a bit surreal being in the heart of Disney World, where every single worker intoned, "Have a magical day!" so incessantly that even the fantasy writers were saying, "Enough, already!")

Enough.

… and what is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?

2010-10-25T23:49:00.000-07:00

Or, put another way, what is the point of a writer’s blog that doesn’t, on a reasonably regular basis, talk about writing? A writer's blog that doesn’t, once in a blue moon, brag?

Blessing’s Bead was named to Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth 2010!

(There. I said it.)

But that’s not all: the cover of Blessing’s Bead is the cover of the October issue of Booklist.

I think I’ll have it framed. Does anyone have a copy they’d be willing to send?

But the coolest thing is this: Booklist’s facebook icon this month is, yes, you guessed it, BLESSING’S BEAD!!! I am not joking. Go friend Booklist and see for yourself.

There. I said it all. I’ll be quiet now. I won’t be self-serving next time, I promise.

Seriously, though, I don’t think that I’m the only writer who has a hard time with self-promotion. It just seems so…gauche. Like running up and down the street hollering Like me! Please like me! I mean, you spend years honing your craft, learning to open yourself to something higher, something over which you ultimately have no control. And you devote countless unpaid hours—yes, years —to pouring your heart and soul onto the page in pursuit of something the name of which mostly alludes you. And after all that they want you to...what did you say?...go out and sell yourself?

Sorry, I think I have a call on the other line...

Actually, it was the cover of Blessing's Bead that attracted them, you know. It wasn't the writing. It was my daughter--that's her picture on the cover. Her name is Susan, after my mother. Her Inupiaq name is Aaluk, the same name as one of the characters in the book. I talk about how that cover came about on Jacket Knack, an interesting blog that examines the art of and issues surrounding book covers. Go read it and then come back and talk to me about book covers, book publicity, or the issues of race I raise there.

Or not.

Where have I been all these weeks, since my first blog post?

2010-10-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Immersed in life and death, loss and memory…

. . . at my brother Dave’s house, in Minneapolis, sleeping in his guest room, listening, on a baby monitor, to the sound of Dave, breathing. His breath comes short and shallow, so quiet, at times, I have to steal into his room to mark the rise and fall of his chest. His eyes are closed. He lies alone on a narrow hospital bed, waging a war with cancer he has vowed to fight to the end.

Barb, his wife of 47 years, sleeps on a camp cot in the living room, the other monitor by her head. She refused to sleep in the guest room bed. Seventy-one years-old and she prefers that cot for now. It reminds her of her of all those years of camping with my brother. Camping in the woods of Northern Minnesota, in the mountains of the pacific northwest, even, one time, in a front yard at a family reunion.

“I’m camping, Dave,” she tells him, now. “Remember?”

And he smiles with one side of his mouth, very gently, his eyes still closed, so small and frail he looks like our mother, now. He has Mother’s finely chiseled bones, that smooth fine skin that never aged. Even his hands have become like our Mother’s artist hands.

When the rain comes at night, showering down on the roof with a sudden outpour and a flash of lightening, I think of Barb on her camp cot, and I remember the tents of our childhood, glowing in the dark of a summer’s night, the swish of water against rock outside and hiss the Coleman lantern within.

Oh how he loved the woods, this brother of mine. He even took his bride duck hunting on their month-long honeymoon back in the days when brides-to-be received frilly negligees at elaborate bridal showers. Mother and I always laughed at the image of Barb, cleaning ducks in her negligee.

There is nothing more they can do for him—he is leaving us, our Davy. The hospice workers come almost daily, like angels—so good, so very good. The one who gives him baths looks at this photo of him. It’s a favorite of mine, one I brought with me from Alaska. Dave is kneeling, in the autumn woods of Minnesota with a brace of grouse in one hand and his hunting dog, Katie, by his side. And you can see, in the way he and Katie look at one another, that he is a true hunter, a man who understands animals.

“Master and student,” the hospice worker says.

Yes, I think. Exactly right.

Fall was Dave’s favorite season. Mine, too. We loved watching the old year pass with a burst of vivid color, the smell of wood smoke and dying leaves pungent and invigorating. And we loved waiting in anticipation for the new year to came, swaddled in white.

He left us on September 28, with the maple trees aflame and the birch trees waving yellow leaves, six days short of his birthday.

This, then, is the parting image that comes to me, on the day of his funeral: Dave, skiing.

I am standing at the bottom of the steepest ski slope, dressed in unfashionable layers of winter clothes, watching my brother ski. His legs are together as one, fluid as a fish tail, his body moving gracefully in and out of gravity as if he were born to fly, as though he must, at any moment, lift off the slope and become airborne.

Everyone is standing at the bottom of the slope, watching as they always did, their voices hushed in awe. I don’t think Dave ever knew or cared about his audience, then or now, but it always made his little sister burst with pride, waiting for him at the bottom. No one ever skied like Dave. This is how I remember it.

He was always a private man, my brother with a sense of spirituality that was tied to the land in a way few people ever experience. When we return to our family cabin on an island in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota, my surviving brother and I, I stand on the shore of the larger island and look across the water to the smaller one, Dave’s island with its log cabin lit by the sun of an autumn day. I am watching, as if for some understanding I might find, some affirmation. I feel it for just a moment: a sudden shock of Presence. Dave is a part of this place. He always will be.

Prophecy

By Elinor Wylie

I shall lie hidden in a hut
   In the middle of an alder wood,
With the back door blind and bolted shut,
   And the front door locked for good.
I shall lie folded like a saint.
   Lapped in a scented linen sheet,
On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint,
   Narrow and cold and neat.
The midnight will be glassy black
   Behind the panes, with wind about
To set his mouth against a crack
   And blow the candle out.

Rest in peace, my brother, Dave Dahl Jr. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

The Tundra Between Us

2010-09-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Saggan beachcoming

When my oldest daughter Rachel was three or four we used to walk to the beach of the Beaufort Sea to look for stones and pieces of ocean-polished glass. There was an old woman who lived along the way and she often sat outside in a brightly-colored parka, enjoying the weather. She was a tiny woman and one of the few left who still wore the traditional tattoos on her chin, made in the old way, no doubt, with ivory and soot. She would smile as we passed by, speaking to Rachel in Inupiaq with words I didn’t understand. Perhaps she was speaking of the weather or making jokes or telling stories.

Her name was Rachel, as it turned out, Rachel Sakeagak. Her Inupiaq name was Naninaaq.

In Inupiaq there is a special relationship between people who share a name. The word is Atiq and although it translates as namesake, the meaning runs much deeper. It implies a special kind kinship because names have spirits attached to them and if you want to keep a person alive or bring them back, you do so through the names you give.

Because she was Rachel, my daughter became Naninaaq and is now a filmmaker with a daughter of her own. She began her filmmaking career under the name of Naninaaq Productions.

Leslie Marmon Silko compares time to an ocean always moving in and out, more circular than liner. Names are like that, too, I think.

One of Rachel’s other Inupiaq names is Nutaaq, Nutaaq, the name of one of the characters in my book, Blessing’s Bead. Nutaaq, the name of my friend Doreen’s daughter who died too young a week ago, fighting the same battle one of my own fights, a battle with addiction. We are so hurt by the fact that Nutaaq lost her battle—so very angry that things like drugs wash up on our shores like old plastic to ensnare our children, once as happy as dolphins.

The truth, of course, is more complicated than that—the truth is a fabric woven of many stories and including threads of bright pain and dark sorrow.

Doreen is a writer, too, and I have been remembering, lately, a a piece she wrote once about her own childhood. She was remembering the old men out on tundra trails in the springtime, digging narrow trenches with sticks to let the melting snow water run off. Keeping the trails that tied one house to another intact, back in the days before heavy equipment destroyed the tundra between us.

After I listened to Doreen that time, I went home and watched my husband, out in the driveway, carving narrow trenches into the mud with the edge of a shovel to let the water run off. It was a task he did every spring, one I'd always found vaguely annoying and ultimately pointless. But watching him that time, I was struck with the sudden shock of recognition, thinking about the ways we forge connections, the code of it in our blood, as it were, as involuntary as a heart beat.

Everything intersects as story and the stories are neither simple nor singular. Like beach glass, we turn them this way and that to catch the light and what we see depends on who we are and how our vision's tuned.

I think of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie's wonderful speech, The Danger of a Single Story. If you haven’t heard it, go listen to it.

Stories matter.

This week is Random Acts of Publicy week, an idea concieved by another writer friend of mine--a way of celebrating each other’s books and stories--by talking about them in public places. I think I’ll go do that, now.

Maybe I just did.