Reviews

• 

  By Jasmine Koster - October 15, 2014 2:36 am Log in to Reply

  I grew up Native American in Alaska, in territory which is amoeaba’d by delayed-arrival waves of second hand American culture. It’s the forefront of environmentally and culturally destructive but lucrative industries, and was an alcohol drenched experience that happened far too fast and many times was bleak. The author somehow takes all that bleakness of which I too well know and offers, through humble honesty, a somehow humorous perspective that doesn’t apologize or condemn the way life is but simply explores a young boy’s desperate and courageous struggle to avoid misery and find a nugget of happiness-as universal as finding a girlfriend and making it on the basketball team, as making friends and avoiding bullies and risking everything to get into a better school. He sheds a kinder light on Western society than one would expect, but this coin is double sided as he remains baffled by his own uncertain identity. I couldn’t put it down.