Blog Entry #8: Contemporary Alaskan Writers

For this blog post, I will write about three of the modern Alaskan writers with pieces in our Alaska: The Last New Land book and how what they write reflects a modern version of Alaska.

The first author is Kim Rich, who wrote the book Johnny's Girl, an excerpt of which is called "Shattered Dreams" and begins on page 695 of The Last New Land.  The piece is about the Good Friday earthquake that hit southern Alaska in 1964.  I chose this story because my mother was in that earthquake.  Her father was a doctor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and their family had been moved to Alaska 6 months earlier and settled in Anchorage.  My mother had just turned 11 years old when the earthquake struck.  The experience was so traumatic to her that she mentally blocked out most of what happened.  She and her sister were setting the table for dinner when the earthquake hit and the last thing she remembered was screaming while she watched the kitchen table shake so much that the juice from a bowl of beets spilled and trickled down the table leg.  When I was a little girl, the story of the earthquake utterly fascinated me and I begged her to tell me everything she knew and remembered about it over and over.  I guess I was a weird child because at bedtime I also begged her to tell me all about the Mount Saint Helens eruption and other disasters she experienced!

My own interests in the 1964 earthquake aside, I think this piece of writing is a good example of modern Alaska.  The earthquake devastated Anchorage, Valdez, and other towns in the area, and over a hundred people were killed while many, many buildings were destroyed.  If the earthquake had occurred 500 years earlier, the area would have been much less densely populated and there would not have been any large buildings, only homes of the Alaska Native people.  The earthquake undoubtedly would have terrified them, but it probably would have had much less of an impact on their lives and settlements since they would not have had much in the way of construction that could have been damaged.

 

 Earthquake damage of an Anchorage street.  Photo by the USGS and found on THIS website called Vibration Data.

The second writing is an excerpt from The Man Who Married a Bear by John Straley, which begins on page 702.  This piece is only a couple of pages long and confused me because there is no mention of either marriage or bears, but it is nonetheless a good example of modern Alaska.  It describes modern day Juneau and Anchorage, and states what I have heard many Alaskans complain:  that Anchorage and Juneau are not really Alaskan cities and have more in common with Washington, Oregon, and California than with Alaska.  I do agree that there is more disconnect than normal between these cities and smaller places in Alaska, perhaps because of the large populations, the number of people who are not Alaskans, and simply how metropolitan and commercial driven the two places are.  I am reluctant to call these locations un-Alaskan and think a person's actions and knowledge of Alaska are more indicative of their residence status.  As an example, my husband has lived in Alaska his entire life and grew up in Anchorage, but has never gone camping, fishing, hunting, lived in a dry cabin, gone on a snow machine, and has very little knowledge of Alaskan history or Alaska Native groups.  There are people who have only been here for a couple of months who probably have more of an Alaskan spirit than he does!

The final piece is the poem "Progress" by Karen Randley and is on page 705.  The poem is about the author's return visit to Fairbanks some time after she moved away.  She lived in Fairbanks for six years in the late 1970s.  In the poem, the woman implies that it was very difficult to live in Fairbanks the first time, and she left because she couldn't stand it anymore.  When she returned, Fairbanks has changed so much and was so un-Alaskan that she had to go home early.  I have lived in Fairbanks for 7 years now and must admit that this poem made me bristle up in defensiveness a bit.  The author writes that, "every corner had a shopping mall selling pistachio nuts and gourmet delites from the lower 48."  Aside from that being patently untrue- Fairbanks only has one shopping mall, the teeny tiny Bentley Mall which is more commonly known as "Bentley Hall" because it's so piddly compared to most malls- I just don't think her evaluation of Fairbanks is fair.  How "real Alaskan" of an experience someone has depends so much on what they want and do.  Plus, people have been hauling supplies to Alaska for centuries now since we cannot grow flour, sugar, and the like to sustain ourselves!  Bringing in food and delicacies from outside Alaska is hardly a new practice.