A line of driftwood The Ada Blackjack story

Prolific and versatile Native American poet and writer Glancy tackles the story of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman who became the seamstress for a two-year expedition to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean in 1921. Glancy is known for investigating the meeting of new and old worlds, Native and Christian worldviews, and Ada's story occupies those intersections. Glancy's diary-like approach reimagines Ada's days, especially after she was left behind to tend to one ill explorer while the others fled to Siberia for food and help. As the two women's voices merge in these poems, Glancy sees her engagement with Ada in a larger context. In thoughtfully parsing Ada's unpublished writings, she notices shifts and alterations: "The old words did not fit the new margins." The poems' drumbeat cadence emphasizes certain words and images, creates patterns, and establishes an almost delirious feeling, reflecting Ada's solitude. Maybe Ada's "developing consciousness of self and identity of difference from other" was her source of strength. Certainly, her determination to hunt seals and trap foxes, let alone her ability to express herself in writing, saved her life. This moving retelling of a heroic woman's journey also demonstrates that history lives through an intimate connection between two women beyond time's borders.

Excerpts from A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story I wanted to know Ada's thoughts on being literate. On learning penmanship.  The meaning of it.  Making marks for letters. The discovery that literacy was more than writing. More than meat and potatoes, though there were no potatoes there. They were rotten on arrival at Wrangle Island. I realized Ada's developing consciousness of self and identity of difference from others. It is between the sentences she wrote. There was an individualization of Ada Blackjack that she did not yet put into words.  But there it is in the crevices. It is in her diary. It is in the calendar-book on which she marked off her days. # I am not alone.  I have writing.  I have the Polar Lights.  They move across the sky as though they were writing. # The men were going to claim Wrangel Island. But the land claimed them.  That was their discovery.  # The driftwood tells stories of where it came from.  It has been with other trees.  Now it is on an island by itself.  Excerpted from A Line of Driftwood: the Ada Blackjack Story by Diane Glancy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.