In How to Dress a Fish, poet Abigail Chabitnoy, of Aleut descent, addresses the lives disrupted by US Indian boarding school policy. She pays particular attention to the life story of her

How to Dress a Fish

In How to Dress a Fish, poet Abigail Chabitnoy, of Aleut descent, addresses the lives disrupted by US Indian boarding school policy. She pays particular attention to the life story of her great grandfather, Michael, who was taken from the Baptist Orphanage, Wood Island, Alaska, and sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Incorporating extracts from Michael's boarding school records and early Russian ethnologiesâ€•while engaging Alutiiq language, storytelling motifs, and traditional practicesâ€•the poems form an act of witness and reclamation. In uncovering her own family records, Chabitnoy works against the attempted erasure, finding that while legislation such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act reconnects her to community, through blood and paper, it could not restore the personal relationships that had already been severed.
Country USA
Brand Wesleyan University Press
Manufacturer Wesleyan University Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2019-02-05
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780819578495

How to Dress a Fish