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Book Review Title

Raising Ourselves by Velma Wallis Who must have this book: Anyone with interest in Native Alaskans or coming of age stories. Actually everyone should read this book. Who should have this book: Everyone ISBN: 0972494472

I got this book to read on my last flight out of Alaska and I couldn't be happier with my choice. I originally read a short but haunting excerpt from this book in Tales from the Edge by Larry Kaniut and could not get it out of my head. That bit of the story I read amazed me with its frankness and ironic humor.

When I saw this book at Titlewave, I knew I had found the book for the flight. I started the book just before take off and could not put it down through a Seattle layover and second leg. I was reading the last few pages as we pulled up to the gate at the Minneapolis/St Paul airport. I put the book down and realized I had just finished an extraordinary book.

This book, which has won the American Book Award, is an amazingly open and painful coming of age story based in a community that has been racked with a painful past, present and future. Wallis bluntly talks about the problems of hopelessness and substance abuse that Fort Yukon struggles with and tells how she and her immediate family coped with the problems. Much of the book is dark and bleak but completely gripping.

I quickly found myself rooting for Velma as she fought to pull herself and her family from this despair and return to a traditional lifestyle. In the end, the book somehow seemed uplifting as she came to grips that she needed to balance the old and the new. I thought about it for a while and couldn't quite figure out why it seemed uplifting. There was tragedy up to the last pages, but somehow you get a sense that she has made it.

Everyone, from every walk of life should read this book. It is horrifying and beautiful at the same time.

Overview

This book is nineteen chapters, beginning with six chapters that introduce you to Fort Yukon and her elders. She gives thorough, and again, frank local and family history that sets up the environment into which she was born. The last thirteen chapters recount her life up to this point with several black and white photographs help illustrate the story.

Author

Velma Wallis is a Gwitch’in Athapascan from Fort Yukon. She first reached international fame with her acclaimed telling of Two Old Women, a traditional story that was passed down orally and almost lost until her beautiful written version. She followed this book up with Bird Girl and her autobiography Raising Ourselves.

Other books by the Author