Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

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Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (born January 6, 1965 in Fairbanks ) is an American author with a focus on Alaska as well as a former radio reporter and former professional fisherman. In October 2017 at the Frankfurt Book Fair , she and her German translator Sonja Finck received the renowned German Youth Literature Prize in the youth book category for their youth novel The Smell of Other People's Houses , their first work .

Life

Hitchcock grew up in Fairbanks. She spent a few years in the core states of the USA (in Alaska so-called "48ers", since 48 old states ) and now lives mainly in Fairbanks again. She sees her identity as a child of Alaska determined by the clear differences that exist between this arctic state of the USA and the heartland, especially since Alaska as an exclave can only be reached by land through Canada. She worked as a fisherwoman on the high seas for years. Their two children spent many months of summer on the family's fishing boat in Southeast Alaska when they were young. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University .

She worked as a radio reporter for many years, in particular for 15 years for the Alaska Public Radio APR and as a producer of the Independent Native News, a weekday news station in the USA and Canada with a focus on information about people of autochthonous origin in Alaska, about US Indians and Canada's First Nations . She produced stories and essays for the Content Distribution National Public Radio NPR and wrote for the newspaper Anchorage Daily News , for High Country News , the Los Angeles Review and other media.

In 2016, she went public with her first novel. It was translated into German in the same year, translations into other languages ​​have followed or are in preparation.

Literary work

Hitchcock published the youth novel The Smell of Other People's Houses in 2016 , her literary debut. She herself comes from the country she writes about and grew up there. Most German-language Alaskan books only reproduce what has been read. The novel was well received by critics in both the US and Germany. The novel describes a year, 1970, in the lives of four younger teenagers in Alaska, their wider peers and adults, their joys and sorrows, and looks back on earlier years. Three of the four protagonists live in difficult family circumstances, some in poverty. Ruth is raised by her grandmother, her father died early in a plane crash when he campaigned politically in Washington, DC against the heavily controversial conversion of Alaska from a federal territory to a 49th state. Her mother became ill from her husband's death and disappeared from Ruth's life. The other three also have a difficult youth; Signs are, for example, an unwanted pregnancy, a violent and abusive father, alcoholism, piety, a big accident, running away from home, violence. At the end of the novel, the life stories of the four main characters and the other young people are increasingly connected. Hitchcock shows how diverse life is. Young people encounter death, loneliness, violence, friendship, hope for a better future and budding love.

What many children in the book have in common is that they have no real home anywhere and are therefore emotionally insecure. Ruth and her sister are raised by a dismissive grandmother, Dora's parents fail because of drunkenness.Hank and his two brothers are looking for a new life by escaping as stowaways because their mother has looked for a new and disagreeable partner after the death of their father at sea . Her father died on his fishing boat as a result of the tsunami that followed the Good Friday quake in 1964 .

Alyce's parents are divorced, she lives mostly with her mother in Fairbanks, but for several weeks in the summer on her father's boat on the south coast of Alaska, 1,500 km away, where she enthusiastically gathers fish. For many adults, children seem to be a burden, which they naturally feel. The burden is also related to the poverty of the neighborhood they live in. Only Dumpling and Bunny have an intact and loving family, whose happiness also radiates to the others, even when it is clouded by a serious accident. Some other adults outside of the family also provide help and security, they can be trusted and positive feelings arise. This happens especially among the young people themselves.

“Dumbling's house smells like people who love each other. In the Lawrence House it smells like being punished for every mistake. "

- The smell of strange people's houses. German version, p. 273

Alyce can hardly decide between sea ​​fishing with her father in the far south in the Alexander Archipelago and gutting the fish on board on the one hand and a possible career as a ballet dancer on the other hand, for which she now has to pass an entrance examination in Fairbanks, 1000 miles away in the north . She didn't expect her father to feel her conflict and to allow her to fly there in the middle of the fishing season without being asked. Due to the biography of the author, fishing plays an essential role in the book and is described in detail in the two very different places where the Pacific salmon spends its life: in the sea north of Haida Gwaii , where it is from Alyces father 14-meter boat with by a trolling is fished, and when returning to the spawning grounds in the Yukon , far to the north , where it means more mobile, wheel-arranged traps , so-called. fish wheels or can be easily caught by fishing abound.

In the book, the children often talk about the ethnic origin of their families, because in Alaska at that time people were initially defined according to their ethnic group, which was also associated with a social definition between rich and poor, with professions and with very different cultures. There were essentially three groups: the Indians, the Eskimos and the now long-established whites who immigrated from the southern United States. At that time, fishing was an economic basis for all three groups. Brand new in the country are recently surfaced, ostentatious nouveau riche from the south, mostly families active in tourism. And of course there are a lot of people who come from mixed families. The young people ultimately manage to solve their problems; the different life plans can be combined with one another. In the final scene everyone comes together and looks hopefully into the coming adulthood.

Hitchcock vividly describes the differences between the groups of people living in Alaska, Eskimos , Indians , whites who immigrated from the 48 states, as well as their social situation, often as precarious , and the very different treatment of children in families, symbolized by the different smells of their homes. Despite all the problems of the children and teenagers, the perspective is encouraging. With mutual help, and of course with the support of some adults, and sometimes by accident, the young people find an acceptable path in life. This path is also illustrated with the help of an attached map, which shows the great distances that are covered in the country. One can also understand these long paths metaphorically as an image for the path to oneself, to the identity of an adolescent, as the reviewer Katharina Laszlo sees in the FAZ .

In addition to the emotional world, the future dreams of very different young people at the beginning of the 1970s, the author vividly depicts the social life, the wild landscape, the cold and the gigantic nature of Alaska, which can be extremely threatening for people at times. The myths of the country also often play a role, e.g. B. the orca who saved a drowning man; or Selma's childish fantasy that she is descended from a Selkie , half human, half seal, because her parents are unknown, she is a foundling . Hitchcock emphasizes, however, that she has not written the usual exotic "Alaska book" with moose and the midnight sun as standard subjects; she is concerned with the young people of the country. The children find that in indigenous families (Indians and Eskimos) only the mother's origin is important in terms of social awareness, so there are echoes of the matrilineality of the ancestors, in contrast to the mandatory civil legal norm of the country.

“You know ... enough to see the gossamer cobwebs between the characters who appear ... That may be fairy tales, it is definitely poetry and this is how this one year (1970), divided into its four seasons, is also described . Rich in images, but with a keen sense of the dangers of unusual comparisons, economical, but not sparse, from the heart, but never from overflowing. There is a sense of the right amount here. The German translation follows this and creates a text that is as beautiful as the story, including all its horrors. Cover and design couldn't be more suitable. "

- Magali Heissler, TITEL Kulturmagazin , May 30, 2016

The British Telegraph counts the book as one of the best (15th out of 17) youth novels of 2016 and emphasizes its polyphony :

“Hitchcock shapes the memories and events of her own childhood in Alaska ... in this gorgeous first novel about the coming-of-age. It is written in (four) different first-person perspectives ... and develops in the 4 seasons of the year. The descriptions (of the people) are unusual. Hitchcock, who was a professional fisherman for 10 years, offers a good look at what it was like to be a teenager in Alaska in the 1970s. You can literally smell the smells it describes. A pleasant and completely different read. "

- Martin Chilton, The best young adult (YA) books of 2016, The Telegraph , May 13, 2016, own trans.

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugendliteratur und Medien , AJuM, in the GEW , praises the book, as an adolescent novel, through its reviewer Jochen Heins:

“The novel ... renounces, and therein lies its strength, on over-the-top life stories, crazy twists and turns and hysterical problems. It tells of deeply human needs: of the longing for love, recognition, affection; in short, the desire to find its place. And this reducedness of the topic is carried by a narrative tone that is as clear as the dew in the spider web of life. The calm and poetic language makes this novel a very special book. Because if you get involved in the synaesthetic impressions, then you can learn that friendship tastes like freshly picked blueberries, and you think you can smell cedar wood and deer blood between the pages. Without question, this novel is a high-profile debut and one of the books of the summer of 2016. "

- AJuM Hamburg, Jochen Heins, 2016

To the role of Doras

A reviewer who delves into the role of non-whites in the book criticizes it. It is mainly about the child Dora, from an Eskimo family. The parents are alcoholics, the father is also physically abusive. The critic thinks that both the indigenous (i.e. Indian) and the Eskimos families are too clichéd, especially with regard to the alcoholism of Dora's parents and among her mother's friends. The reviewer wishes that the causes of this alcoholism had been better explained, and she wants to know why, in contrast, the Native American family, into which Dora is then accepted, is so positively drawn.

Hitcock elaborates on the question of social deviance in an interview with Gen de Botton:

“If you asked me which character I like the most, I would say: this is Dora. She is representative of many of the girls I reported about at the time as a reporter. In these stories there was often no solution. For years I had to bear with this fact, these stories from life did not let me go. I couldn't help writing about it, not even in the novel. "

- Hitchcock, April 4, 2016, own transl.

expenditure

Media coverage

  • Mother was half human, half seal. Review by Katharina Laszlo, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung FAZ, August 8, 2016, p. 10 online
  • Alaska - Silent Land? Encounter with Bonnie-Sue Hichcock. Review by Katrin Rüger, Marion Hübinger. Buchpalast announcement, August 2, 2016
    • Wild flowers or burnt toast , Süddeutsche Zeitung, SZ, September 27, 2016, review by Barbara Hordych (with 3 family photos of the author on the ship)
  • Blind passengers. Youngsters in Alaska in the 1970s. Review by Siggi Seuss, Süddeutsche Zeitung SZ, June 25, 2016 Online
  • Life in distant Alaska. The smell of guilt and atonement. Four people, four individual stories, Catholic piety, love longings ... . Review by Siggi Seuss, Deutschlandfunk , July 23, 2016 online
  • Poetic, Unflinching and Fierce. Reviewed by Linda Buckley-Archer, The Guardian , August 20, 2016
    • Photo gallery: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock's Alaska in Pictures. Das Land in the 1990s, 9 selected recordings by the author for her book, in The Guardian. Including two views of Sitka , the port of departure for the fictional ship from which Hank's brother is rescued from the sea.

literature

  • Deborah Stevenson: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, The smell ... in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Vol. 69, No. 8, 2016, pp. 419-420
  • Debbie Reese: Hitchcock, The smell ... in American Indians in Children's Literature, 2016 ISSN  2374-1406

Literary prizes or finalist for prizes

“The atmospherically densely narrated, artfully composed novel is deeply disturbing and allows the fears and worries of the inhabitants of another cultural area to be understood in a turbulent time. At the same time, it is timeless, as the issues that concern young people are universal. "

- German Youth Literature Award, youth novel, statement of the jury, October 2017
  • "The smell of other people houses" is one of the five finalists of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award in 2017 , the prize won "The Serpent King" by Jeff Zentner.
  • 2018: In March the book won the Alaskana award , ALASKANA Prize, in the category "Children's / Youth Literature " created this year , donated by the Alaska Library Association (Association of Alaskan Libraries). The adult award has existed since 1994.

Web links

See also

  • Nunamiut , Dora's family is one of them
  • Athabasques , the Dumplings and Bunnys families are one of them

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Award. Youth literature prize awarded at the book fair ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Stuttgarter Nachrichten, October 14, 2017
  2. ↑ See the picture series in The Guardian for the book, below under media coverage.
  3. ↑ Hitchcock considers Dora's difficult life as a child among alcoholics to be a not uncommon fate in the country, although there are of course aid programs for the children today. Hitchcock often found out about this as a radio reporter, as she says in an illuminating interview in which she discusses her personal background that led to the writing of the novel, originally a collection of short stories; see. The Last Frontier: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock on “The Smell of Other People's Houses” , conversation with Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal, February 16, 2016.
  4. ↑ In the English Wikipedia 1964 Alaska earthquake the consequences of the quake for the Alaska-Canada coast are presented in more detail.
  5. ↑ engl. trolling, cf. this lemma in the English Wikipedia.
  6. ↑ see Fish wheel in the English Wikipedia, with Fig.
  7. ↑ In the original: H. uses memories and events of her childhood in Alaska (a place where her sister had her hair chopped off for bragging about it) in her affecting debut coming-of-age novel, which is written from multiple first-person perspectives (with Ruth, Dora, Alyce and Hank) and set over the four seasons of a year. The descriptions are bold ("Selma isn't fat, but she's doughy ... while her mother is all pointy and angular, as if she was built by students in a remedial class") and Hitchcock, who spent 10 years fishing commercially, evokes an interesting view of being a teenager in 1970s Alaska. And you can almost smell the smells she describes, including the pungent odor of deer blood. A nice and different read.
  8. ↑ AJuM
  9. ↑ by Debbie Reese, February 7, 2016. A website about the image of Indians in US youth literature
  10. ↑ The author repeatedly hints at the father's violence and describes Dora's fear in the nights. Her mother doesn't protect her from it.
  11. ↑ Bookweb of the American Booksellers Association
  12. ↑ Award ceremony for the author and translator at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2017
  13. ↑ Ragazzi
  14. ^ Table of contents, in Polish
  15. ↑ online ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Stuttgarter Nachrichten October 14, 2017, with photo of the winners. Jury statement on the author and translator: In her biographically inspired debut, Hitchcock writes about a cultural area that has so far hardly been dealt with in youth literature. The finely spun narrative threads run through the barren cold of Alaska, cross the houses of the residents of the region and are artfully brought together. The quality of this extraordinary novel, which was excellently translated by Sonja Finck, lies in the ability to translate the atmosphere, the smell and the local color of Alaska into a linguistic tone that is immediately captivating. The author convinces with the sensitive drawings of her young protagonists, whose inner workings find symbolic expression in the landscape depictions. Hitchcock succeeds in drawing a picture of society of poetic power and timeless topicality from the experiences, needs and dreams of a generation. The linguistically powerful novel for young people combines the description of a distant cultural area with universal questions of growing up. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de
  16. ↑ There are links in the running texts of all sites that link to older essays or radio reports by the author
  17. ↑ Mittmann writes: Together the two (the rescued boy and A.) travel back to Alyce's hometown ... That is incorrect. Alyce flies to Fairbanks; the woman who accompanies him there in the car is an adult, a social worker.
personal data
SURNAME Hitchcock, Bonnie-Sue
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American reporter and author
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Fairbanks