And that’s what makes the book so real and so valuable. She narrates a story that we can barely say out loud as Iñuit - not because we’re not allowed to and no one will listen, but because it can be so scary to our inner selves. Parallels Between Northwest Alaska and Eastern CanadaĪ thousand stories woven into one, Tanya Tagaq expresses the expansion of our ancestry - our heritage of the land and the trauma - through beautiful poetry. Nunavut, situated east of Northwest Territories, and northwest of Hudson Bay, forms most of the Canadian archipelago and borders Greenland. Split Tooth © 2018, by Tanya Tagaq, Published by Viking Canada of Penguin Random House Canada, Septem Audiobook narrated by the author. It was longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. This Split Tooth review is of both the print and audio editions of this book.Īuthor Tanya Tagaq is an acclaimed Inuk “vocalist, throat singer, composer, visual artist, advocate, writer and public speaker from Cambridge Bay, (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, Canada.” This is Tagaq’s first book. Jacqui Lambert, who is from Kotzebue, Alaska, with family roots in Noorvik and Kiana. Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.Split Tooth review, written by Iñupiaq author and publisher, M. Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.

She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us.

She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world.

She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. In the end, there may be no difference between them. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. “'From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you've ever read.

Tanya split tooth