My Name Is Not Easy

Description:

Luke knows his I´nupiaq name is full of sounds white people can't say. He knows he'll have to leave it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic village.

At Sacred Heart School things are different. Instead of family, there are students--Eskimo, Indian, White--who line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there's some kind of war going on. And instead of comforting words like tutu and maktak, there's English. Speaking I´nupiaq--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. Each has their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School--and in the wider world--will never be the same.

Brief description: Debby Dahl Edwardson has lived at the northern most tip of North America in Barrow, Alaska, for over thirty years. She married into the I´nupiaq community and most of what she writes about is set within this culture. It's not the culture she was born into, but it's the one she feels she belongs to in every sense of the word. While My Name Is Not Easy is fiction, it was inspired by real stories from a number of boarding schools that once operated throughout Alaska.