The Sámi Problem
An incisive novel illuminating a young mother's reckoning with her own identity and S mi lineage through the lives and struggles of her ancestors
As a freelance journalist living in France, Marie Engmo has traveled far and wide to write about languages and local cultures threatened with extinction. But when she returns home to Norway for her hkku's (grandmother's) funeral, she recognizes how far she has strayed from her own sense of self and her S mi identity. Kathrine Nedrejord's acclaimed novel--winner of Norway's national book award--is the lucid and compelling story of Marie's emotional search through her family's past for a history and legacy that she might bequeath to her own infant daughter.
In spare and elegant prose, Nedrejord illuminates a young woman's fierce and clear-eyed reckoning with the sacrifice and oppression that has marked the women and men in her family and generations of Indigenous S mi communities in the northern reaches of Norway. As Marie awakens to the lengths her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother traversed to survive discrimination and displacement, she uncovers and embodies their strength and dignity that are her--and her daughter's--inheritance. What emerges is an unflinching examination of belonging to a minority that can never dominate, that will always have to negotiate and compromise its place in the world. As stirring as it is troubling, The S mi Problem is itself an awakening and a literary triumph.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
