Telepathically Saying...
Somehow I feel it's not... grasping something... I don't think it's one of my best.
Nora Pierce makes her debut with The Insufficiency of Maps, a great novel that gives some insight of Native American life today while the reader follows Alice, the protagonist, in her journey of finding a place where she belongs― home.
Once in the reservation, Alice, who is five years old, and her mother, Amalie, find Joseph, Alice’s father, and we see that he is an alcoholic like Amalie. Alice starts going to school, an excuse that her father uses later to convince Amalie to stay when she makes an attempt to leave. However, after the first attempt, Amalie has an accident where she inflicted pain upon herself because “they told me to do it”. This triggers Amalie to leave the reservation with Alice, one day, in order leave “them” behind and begin making their way to California to live with Amalie’s father, a grandfather Alice never met.
We know something is wrong with Alice’s mother when she finds the police taking her away. When Alice and her grandfather visit her at a hospital, she does not make any signs of acknowledgement or recognition to Alice until the very end of the visit. After being released, Amalie seems to hold resentment with her father since she hardly listens and even ignores him for the last part of their final conversation together; she won’t answer or talk to him when he calls from “The Home.”
After pulling another unusual stunt because of “them”, Alice and her mother try to run away from her grandfather’s home and end up in a park. Alice falls from the swing to find her mother is nowhere near and she eventually finds her in the bathroom, but Amalie does not recognize her own daughter. They end up at a hospital, both of them dirty and Alice injured. When the policeman asks Amalie about her relation to Alice, she claims none and Alice is, after, adopted by the Warricks, a white family. At first, the cultural differences do not matter much to Alice, but as she gets older, she questions whether she really belongs with them, a common human thought, or not, even though she has grown to love them. She sees it when the cousins visit, when she has to go to meetings and classes involving Native American issues or culture.
In the end, The Insufficiency of Maps is about finding our home, where we belong, or ourselves. Nora Pierce tells Alice’s story lyrically, and at the same time, also gives the reader some insight of lives that some Native Americans today lead, along with some of their feelings. The book captures the reader while telling the story of a girl who does not see that maps will not lead her home. It’s a book that makes you think.
I'm not feeling too confident about this one.
But...
I tried. That counts for something, right? I hope...
Nora Pierce makes her debut with The Insufficiency of Maps, a great novel that gives some insight of Native American life today while the reader follows Alice, the protagonist, in her journey of finding a place where she belongs― home.
Once in the reservation, Alice, who is five years old, and her mother, Amalie, find Joseph, Alice’s father, and we see that he is an alcoholic like Amalie. Alice starts going to school, an excuse that her father uses later to convince Amalie to stay when she makes an attempt to leave. However, after the first attempt, Amalie has an accident where she inflicted pain upon herself because “they told me to do it”. This triggers Amalie to leave the reservation with Alice, one day, in order leave “them” behind and begin making their way to California to live with Amalie’s father, a grandfather Alice never met.
We know something is wrong with Alice’s mother when she finds the police taking her away. When Alice and her grandfather visit her at a hospital, she does not make any signs of acknowledgement or recognition to Alice until the very end of the visit. After being released, Amalie seems to hold resentment with her father since she hardly listens and even ignores him for the last part of their final conversation together; she won’t answer or talk to him when he calls from “The Home.”
After pulling another unusual stunt because of “them”, Alice and her mother try to run away from her grandfather’s home and end up in a park. Alice falls from the swing to find her mother is nowhere near and she eventually finds her in the bathroom, but Amalie does not recognize her own daughter. They end up at a hospital, both of them dirty and Alice injured. When the policeman asks Amalie about her relation to Alice, she claims none and Alice is, after, adopted by the Warricks, a white family. At first, the cultural differences do not matter much to Alice, but as she gets older, she questions whether she really belongs with them, a common human thought, or not, even though she has grown to love them. She sees it when the cousins visit, when she has to go to meetings and classes involving Native American issues or culture.
In the end, The Insufficiency of Maps is about finding our home, where we belong, or ourselves. Nora Pierce tells Alice’s story lyrically, and at the same time, also gives the reader some insight of lives that some Native Americans today lead, along with some of their feelings. The book captures the reader while telling the story of a girl who does not see that maps will not lead her home. It’s a book that makes you think.
I'm not feeling too confident about this one.
But...
I tried. That counts for something, right? I hope...