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Biography & Autobiography. Multi-Cultural. Nonfiction. In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive twenty-five-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman-who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband-conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished. Following her triumphant return to civilization, the international press proclaimed her the female Robinson Crusoe. But whatever stories the press turned out came from the imaginations of reporters: Ada Blackjack refused to speak to anyone about her horrific two years in the Arctic. Only on one occasion-after charges were published falsely accusing her of causing the death of one her companions-did she speak up for herself. Jennifer Niven has created a compelling history of this remarkable woman, taking full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son. Ada Blackjack is more than a rugged tale of a woman battling the elements to survive in the frozen north-it is the story of a hero.… (more)
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Stefansson believed the Arctic could be colonized with ease and sent others to do it for him. The result,
The book focuses on Ada as a person and as a representative of the exploitation and condescension women and the Inuit faced in the first half of the 20th century. Long on adventure and, thankfully, short on polemic.
Four men and Ada started out, and only Ada survived. How and why is written quite explicitly and in such a way that I was unable to put the book down until finished. I would have never forgiven those who maligned her if she hadn't, near the end of her life, set the record straight, and thankfully, it is all recorded in this book. A must read.
This book tries to do two things. One is to tell the story of the 1921-1923 Wrangel Island expedition in which the Inuit woman Ada Blackjack participated. The other, and the primarily one, is to tell Ada's own life story.
These two really do need to be reviewed
That caution being spoken, I repeat that the narrative of the expedition is good.
The narrative of Ada Blackjack was more complicated. Oh, I concede that Niven didn't have much material to work with as far as actual biography is concerned; records about Inuit born in the late 1800s are all but non-existent! And Blackjack didn't leave much in the way of personal accounts, and she seems to have been quite socially isolated. So, in essence, we get a capsule biography of Ada's early years, a detailed examination of a period of four years or so when she was in public view, and then it's back to the capsule biography. It's not really a portrait of a complete person.
But it is a very puzzling story. Why did Ada Blackjack suffer so much at the hands of the other members of the expedition? "Arctic hysteria" is just a phrase. There is no question but that some people do turn very strange in the Arctic; history shows that again and again. But Ada's was a different sort of strangeness. And she was socially isolated among both Inuit and Europeans. She had repeated marital liaisons that failed. She was afraid of all sorts of things, with polar bears being the most noteworthy. When attacked, she rarely defended herself from the charges against her. She doesn't seem to have liked to talk. It sounds as if she had a thing about jigsaw puzzles. The list goes on.
At minimum, it's the picture of a woman who had anxiety issues. But also social phobia. She wasn't stupid -- her ability to survive when four stronger, more assertive men failed shows that. But she had trouble using her skills.
We all see what we want to see. As a person who has autism myself, what I saw was a woman who had autism, and suffered the social cost that people with autism often pay. Do I know that? Of course not. Author Niven never tries to get into Ada's psychology at all, except for the brief mention of Arctic hysteria, which she treats as an isolated thing. But it doesn't matter if Ada had autism or not; what matters is that we don't really understand her enough to be sure. In the end, I'm not sure I gained any real understanding of this woman who was, potentially, so important -- one of the first women to engage in Arctic exploration. This feels like a hole in the book, to me. At least, it nagged at me throughout.
On the other hand, I know of no other modern books about the 1920s expedition. We owe Jennifer Niven a lot for reminding us of it. And of the woman who, in the 1920s, very quietly showed that women were capable of a lot more than the men of the time gave them credit for.
It's not a plot spoiler to say that Ada was the only human to make it out alive (and yes, the cat survives, too). But, here's where the story gets interesting. Stefansson vacillates between wanting to take all the credit for Ada's survival and pretending he's never heard of the woman. It's what happens after the rescue that becomes the bigger story.
As an aside, I love the process of discovery. While Niven was researching her first book, The Ice Master she discovered Nome, Alaska native Ada Blackjack. Ada's adventure intrigued Niven enough to prompt her to dig into Blackjack's life story and ultimately, write a memoir about her expedition with four white men (and a cat) to Wrangel Island.