This story is about an Inuit girl named Miyax, or Julie in English, who gets lost in the Alaskan wilderness while running away from home to get to her pen pal, Amy, in San Francisco. The reason that Miyax left is that her husband from an arranged marriage tried to rape her. In order to survive Miyax has to depend on the wilderness skills and Eskimo traditions she learned from her father as well as a pack of wolves who she learns to communicate with using nonverbal signals which she learns and practices through observation of the wolves. In the second section of the novel Miyax has a flashback of her past. The reader learns that her mother died and that Miyax grew up with her father, Kapugen, who taught her how to survive in the arctic. Her father goes to war and Miyax marries a boy named Daniel. We learn about the "Americanization" of many of the Inuit people such as Naka and his alcoholism or Daniel being laughed at for not having sex with his "wife". Julie decides to run away and decides to go by her Eskimo name of Miyax. In the last section of the book the story returns to Miyax's experience and bonding with the pack of wolves. She has become one of them and is horrified when she realizes that they are in danger because of her people. Amaroq the head wolf is killed by hunters and Miyax chases the others away to protect them. Eventually Miyax returns to her people and her father only to discover that he has married an American woman and is not living in the Eskimo ways that she had learned from him. At the end of the book she makes the decision to leave him for he is "dead to her" only to return because she feels as though the spirit of Eskimos is dead.
This book was another complicated decision for me to decide whether or not it would work as a quality piece of diverse children's literature. To begin, it has won the Newberry Medal and is therefore considered a quality piece of literature. What complicates things the most are two things: the first is the rape scene between Daniel and Julie and secondly the pessimistic ending of the novel. The first is something that would have to be taken into consideration when using in a classroom, especially with adolescents and young adults. This book does not portray all Eskimos in a positive light. We see rape, alcoholism, abuse, and Americanization. On the other hand, Miyax represents the positive representation of Eskimos. the book does an excellent job incorporating language, names, tradition, and elements of culture into the story while also combining important themes to adolescent literature such as search for identity.
The most significant element that this book contains that makes it a quality piece of diverse literature in my opinion is the combination of cultures and the pressures of Americanization that affect the Inuit people. This is a real problem and helps readers to appreciate the authentic, untarnished traditions of cultures. They also see the dangerous and losses that can accompany Americanization and forced assimilation. I also think that while the end of the novel has a pessimistic feel to it, it can be interpreted in a positive way. Miyax's connection and concept of herself as an Eskimo and the values associated with that is so strong that I believe that her plan was to go home and remind her father of all the things she had once learned from him. In this way, the novel combines the elements of respecting and learning from elders as well as the theme of youth responsibility in the continuation of important traditions, values, and understandings that can be just as valuable to the elders.
Julie of the Wolves, like the other books I read on this topic, included a strong connection to nature and animals. Miyax learns to respect and appreciate the language and traditions of the wolves in a way that symbolizes how readers should treat different cultures. Through observation and respect, Julie learns to understand and communicate with the wolves as well as depend on and be depended upon by them for survival. Through Julie's experience lost in the Alaskan wilderness as well as her connection with the wolves we learn a lot about the arctic, old eskimo tradition, the struggle and cultural clash of Inuit people and Americans, and nature from an Inuit perspective. As I said before in an earlier post on Jean craighead George, she is not an insider author but is an informed one. She did quite a bit of research in Alaska and also did quite a bit of studying and field experimenting with communicating with wolves. The information we receive from this novel about wolf behaviors and communications is authentic and real to life.
The combination of Eskimo/Inuit tradition and Americanization helps readers to understand the pros and cons of Americanization and also assists them in connecting to the story and the struggles of Julie. Readers find themselves pressing for the traditions and Eskimo ways. I believe that this book would really promote an active discussion about maintaing important traditions as well as the effects and means of preventing over-Americanization of a culture. This book covers a multitude of important issues that young adults can easily understand and connect to in a variety of ways but in any case the basic message of understanding and acceptance shines through in this novel.
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