Through Yup'ik Eyes: An Adopted Son Explores the Landscape of Family [Hardcover]

Colin Chisholm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2000

This haunting memoir seeks to define many dimensions of the human drama. Its poetic quality will make you remember this story long after you finish the book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Intriguingly, Chisholm's mother, known as Inaqaq or Doris, was born of a Yup'ik Eskimo mother and a Finnish father in a fishing village in 1920s Alaska. Following the death of her own mother when she was four, Inaqaq was sent to the Seattle area to be raised by a Swedish family who essentially adopted her. After giving birth to two children of her own, she later became an adoptive mother as well welcoming the blond, green-eyed author and two other youngsters into her life. Setting out to record his mother's life story, first-time author Chisholm (a 1995 National Magazine Award finalist) found that all who had known her since she was a young girl, except for one reticent aunt, had died. When the blank spaces threatened to force him to abandon his project, he began filling them with "fictional history." The result is a melodic, if rough, narration, in which the past and the present are interwoven to provide a more authentic understanding of four generations in his family. The liberties Chisholm takes with his mother's early life story can be distracting, but they are so richly detailed and skillfully crafted that readers will do well to relax and absorb all that he offers. His insights into adoption are deftly rendered and celebratory, making his book an engrossing meditation on the many ways that "family" can be a curiously expansive termDmaking this a good choice for reading group discussions. Agent, Denis Shannon. (Nov. 1)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

An engrossing meditation on the many ways that family can be a curiously expansive term... -- Publisher's Weekly, October 30, 2000

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Alaska Northwest Books; First Edition edition (October 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882405330
• ISBN-13: 978-0882405339
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,045,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Ground-Breaking Work, December 6, 2000

By 

"ajmcclanahan" (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Through Yup'ik Eyes: An Adopted Son Explores the Landscape of Family (Hardcover)

Colin Chisholm's Through Yup'ik Eyes is a truly remarkable and ground-breaking work.

The subject of Mr. Chisholm's book is his mother, and his love and respect for her shine through on every single page of this hauntingly written book. The fact that he devoted several years to his quest to learn about his mother's past is itself a remarkable undertaking. What he produced as a result of his travels and studies is a compelling look at a woman who wanted desperately to go "home," but was unable to do so. What makes Through Yup'ik Eyes so truly inspiring is that Mr. Chisholm did in fact find a way to take his mother home. Through his efforts, she was posthumously reunited with her relatives after so many painful years of being away.

We live in a changing world, and not the least of the changes are the new ways we are finding to define our identities. Mr. Chisholm succeeded in returning his mother to her beloved Alaska, but he also made a big stride in offering a definition of family. Rather than painting an entire group of people with one brush, what Mr. Chisholm offers is a deeply moving picture of one woman and her relationship to her son.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Yup'ik Eyes, December 4, 2000

By 

Walkie Charles (Fairbanks, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Through Yup'ik Eyes: An Adopted Son Explores the Landscape of Family (Hardcover)

A humbling, chilling, sensitive, compassionate portrayal of a love toward a mother, and the search for the identity of a silent history, is truly extracted by the author about his experience as a child of a mother whom he wants strongly to understand.

To create a story about a culture one only has glimpses of as one is growing up because of some silence or resistence that brought the parent to carry is, in and of itself, a very difficult task to bear. Colin Chisholm in blending reality and fiction into a heart-felt document, unfolds the silent stories of many children who, like his mother, were taken away during the tuberculosis and influenza epidemic that killed so many of the Yup'ik Eskimo people at the turn of the 2oth century. In one sense Colin's mother was fortunate to be able to live; whereas so many people such as my grandparents, were not -- who knew and possibly saw Mrs. Chisholm being taken away at such a tender age, never to be seen again. A sensitive topic written with respect about a culture the author only knows a little of is truly an honorable effort. I commend Mr. Chisholm in telling part of my Yup'ik history in a way that brings out the love, the struggles, and the determination to survive that Yup'ik people faced, and continue to face.

How brave and honorable it is to learn that Colin is able to track down the side of his family he doesn't know, and in a culture that is seldom recognized or heard of. The yearning for meaning about family and the love for a mother whom Colin Chisholm pursued ends up in a stronger family relationship. Colin's mother would be so proud of a son that bravely conquered family ties.