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A review by alisarae
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by Blair Braverman
I am such a huge fan of Blair’s. I love her Twitter stories and her life is so wild and fascinating. So, I decided to read her book.
This memoir has very little sled dog action. Almost no mention of individual dogs and their quirks, just a couple stories of particular runs. This is mostly about Blair’s time in rural Norway and two summers on an Alaskan glacier. It is also very much about how her relationship with her own psyche and body, her decision-making process, and her relationships with other people were deeply affected by abuse from men.
Now, when you hear her story—the casual unwanted touches, the sex jokes, the pushy boyfriend—you might think, “Really? Isn’t her PTSD a bit of an over reaction?” (I guess it could be called PTSD? I’m not really sure what the correct name is for the long-lasting ill ease that every woman faces when she is in a room with men). But these questions plagued Blair, plague every woman, and fill us with self doubt that infects every level of our psychology and relationships. I am convinced that Blair’s story is universal for 100% of women (the parts about interactions with men.... not the arctic living), and she does a really awesome job of unpacking those interactions to show how they completely shaped a decade of her life. It is hard for many of us to put into words how unwanted sexual banter or attention makes us feel. Uncomfortable? Ok, needing to pee is uncomfortable. So what? But it’s so much deeper. For example, Blair went through a whole see-saw of reactions in a single day on the Alaskan ice after a breakup with her abusive coworker: from wearing men’s clothes to hide her body in shame and to deflect male attention, to posing for photos in a bikini to prove self-ownership and provoke anger in her ex, and back to retreating into blankets and self-loathing. Why does she boast to a group of men about a sexual escapade that was in reality a rape? To earn the men’s respect and convince herself to not think about the R word. Why does she go along with situations where she is uncomfortable and potentially in danger? Because keeping quiet is less exhausting than trying to convince people that she is in the right; because she tried asking for help already and was turned away; because other people saw and said it was nothing; because to speak out is to ostracize yourself from the group (all the more in rural and remote places... there is no “I’ll just make other friends”); because participating is to earn acceptance; because she agreed to something and thus had an obligation to see it through, etc etc. I understand all of this. I think all women do.
So yeah, this is a great book for talking about what consent is, what abuse looks like (quiet abuse—the most dangerous kind), and what a healthy relationship does and doesn’t look like. I would read this with a young person over a lot of other books because it is THAT full of conversation potential. Plus, ya know, Blair just qualified for the Iditarod this week, so she’s a badass.
This memoir has very little sled dog action. Almost no mention of individual dogs and their quirks, just a couple stories of particular runs. This is mostly about Blair’s time in rural Norway and two summers on an Alaskan glacier. It is also very much about how her relationship with her own psyche and body, her decision-making process, and her relationships with other people were deeply affected by abuse from men.
Now, when you hear her story—the casual unwanted touches, the sex jokes, the pushy boyfriend—you might think, “Really? Isn’t her PTSD a bit of an over reaction?” (I guess it could be called PTSD? I’m not really sure what the correct name is for the long-lasting ill ease that every woman faces when she is in a room with men). But these questions plagued Blair, plague every woman, and fill us with self doubt that infects every level of our psychology and relationships. I am convinced that Blair’s story is universal for 100% of women (the parts about interactions with men.... not the arctic living), and she does a really awesome job of unpacking those interactions to show how they completely shaped a decade of her life. It is hard for many of us to put into words how unwanted sexual banter or attention makes us feel. Uncomfortable? Ok, needing to pee is uncomfortable. So what? But it’s so much deeper. For example, Blair went through a whole see-saw of reactions in a single day on the Alaskan ice after a breakup with her abusive coworker: from wearing men’s clothes to hide her body in shame and to deflect male attention, to posing for photos in a bikini to prove self-ownership and provoke anger in her ex, and back to retreating into blankets and self-loathing. Why does she boast to a group of men about a sexual escapade that was in reality a rape? To earn the men’s respect and convince herself to not think about the R word. Why does she go along with situations where she is uncomfortable and potentially in danger? Because keeping quiet is less exhausting than trying to convince people that she is in the right; because she tried asking for help already and was turned away; because other people saw and said it was nothing; because to speak out is to ostracize yourself from the group (all the more in rural and remote places... there is no “I’ll just make other friends”); because participating is to earn acceptance; because she agreed to something and thus had an obligation to see it through, etc etc. I understand all of this. I think all women do.
So yeah, this is a great book for talking about what consent is, what abuse looks like (quiet abuse—the most dangerous kind), and what a healthy relationship does and doesn’t look like. I would read this with a young person over a lot of other books because it is THAT full of conversation potential. Plus, ya know, Blair just qualified for the Iditarod this week, so she’s a badass.