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Start giftingMy Name Is Not Easy
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Learn moreMy name is not easy. My name is hard like ocean ice grinding the shore or wind pounding the tundra…
Luke knows his Iñupiaq name is full of sounds white people can’t say. So he leaves it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles away from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School, students—Eskimo, Indian, White—line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there’s some kind of war going on. Here, speaking Iñupiaq—or any native language—is forbidden. And Father Mullen, whose fury is like a force of nature, is ready to slap down those who disobey. Luke struggles to survive at Sacred Heart. But he’s not the only one. There’s smart-aleck Amiq, a daring leader—if he doesn’t self-destruct; Chickie, blond and freckled, a different kind of outsider; and small, quiet Junior, noticing everything and writing it all down. They each have their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School—and the wider world—will never be the same.
Debby Dahl Edwardson grew up in Minnesota, where she spent summers at her family cabin on an island in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. She earned a BA from Colorado College, attended Nansenskolen in Norway, and has lived for over thirty years in Barrow, the northernmost community in Alaska. She earned an MFA from Vermont College in 2005. Debby and her husband George have seven children. Her picture book, Whale Snow (Charlesbridge, 2003), was named to the IRA Notable Books for a Global Society and the CBC/NSST lists and was named Best Picture Book by IPPY. Her first novel, Blessing’s Bead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) was selected by the Junior Library Guild and named to the IRA Notable Books for a Global Society, ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, and Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for Youth lists. Her novel, My Name is Not Easy, is a 2011 National Book Award Finalist.
Reviews
“Edwardson is to be applauded for her depth of research and her ability to portray all sides of the equation in a fair and balanced manner while still creating a very enjoyable read.” —School Library Journal
“Debby Edwarson’s My Name is Not Easy brought me to tears as I remembered the loneliness and confusion I felt when I left my home and family in Arctic Alaska for boarding school thousands of miles away. 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, challenging us to find new ways to survive. It is an excellent work of fiction with important truths to be remembered.” —William L. Iggigruk Hensley, author of Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People
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