A review by mersell
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by Blair Braverman

4.0

A vulnerable account of the author's search for identity and belonging, "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube" draws readers up close to Blair Braverman's experiences in both Norway and Alaska as a high school exchange student, a beginning musher, and a young woman in places dominated by men. Braverman doesn't shy away from sharing the discomfort, sexual assault, and date rape she experienced, but she writes of these things in a tasteful, honest way that is appropriately shocking, uncomfortable, and in places angering to the reader. And while her account raises questions about sexism and misogyny, she doesn't paint a broad brush over men as she'd experienced one being painted over women. Her writing reveals an understanding that the opposite sex is as complex her own and can't be simplified to two tone portraits. As I read, I came to love the people she loved and found myself tearing up toward the end, sad not only that she was leaving them behind in the narrative, but also that I would have to leave them, too, when I turned the last page.