Nine months later...no, not a baby. A post! I am currently taking a valuing diversity in children's literature class. Part of our assignment is to critique eight books from various "ethnic groupings." Here is my first one regarding the American Indian experience in children's literature.
I can’t believe I’ve discovered Karen Hesse so late in life, but am glad she’s part of my favorites now. I really enjoyed her Depression-era novel Out of the Dust and Aleutian Sparrow holds a similar charm.
Set in the months and years after the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor this story follows Vera, an Aleut, and her people as they are evacuated from the Aleutian Islands to southeast Alaska. Vera’s account is told in prose informing us of how she and her people used to live and how they now struggle to survive in the government camps. The U.S. relocates all five villages of Aleut to Ketchikan hundreds of miles away in southeast Alaska. While the Aleut are comfortable in high winds, high seas and high spirits, Ketchikan and their camp at Ward Lake feels landlocked; they cannot see water anywhere through their rainforest home. The government makes them build their own sparse cabins, launder using four faucets and use an open trough for a latrine. Vera observes that a nearby German POW camp is better off than they are. Yet they are required to stay there and find their own subsistence for the next three years.
I was interested to read a “Native American” story that wasn’t set in the lower 48. Especially living in the south schools get inundated with Cherokee and Algonquian Thanksgiving stories. I still found some interesting stereotypes, however. A doctor from the Outside comes to provide check ups and is surprised at their dress. He asks, “Where are your reindeer skins?” The nearby village doesn’t like the Aleut being “forced” on them. They Aleut find themselves being arrested and jailed constantly for unknown reasons. When they finally return to their village in 1945 they find it ransacked, not by the Japanese but by bored and depressed American soldiers, “even the seal-gut pants. What does a soldier from Arkansas want with seal-gut pants?” Probably the novelty of something “exotic” from a culture he doesn’t even realize possess U.S. citizenship.
What struck me was how effective Hesse is at eliciting sympathy and rage without melodrama. The non-rhyming prose is beautiful and captivating. There is a love story but it’s secondary. There is quite a lot of death but it’s not manipulated to pull at your heart strings. What it is is a story of identity – “We never thought who we were was so dependent on where we were” – and retaining that identity after betrayal – “Worldwide our government spends large sums of money to piece lives back together. No money is spent here.”
I also found a few surprises. The villages were quite religious, and not in the way I would have expected. They practiced a version Russian Orthodoxy! This makes sense being so close to Russia, and added (or removed) an interesting layer to all the assumptions a reader could be making while enjoying this story. I appreciated how this story doesn’t attempt to tell you everything you wanted to know about the Aleut. This is one part of their more contemporary history. We are reminded that they have dealt with years of similar heavy-handedness – “How many times can a people lose their way before they are lost forever?” – but they are referring to first the Russians, then the Americans and now the Japanese, not just the proverbial White Man. This adds a thoughtful perspective not present (or able to be present) in other Native American struggles.
I highly recommend this book for 4th – 9th graders. A big range, I know. It’s an easy read and would provide historic food for thought for younger readers, while older readers will be able to relate to the aging main character and explore identity more in-depth.
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