Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by
March 2019
I’ve followed Blair Braverman on Twitter for quite a while now, and I’ve been wanting to read her book for ages. I finally managed to pick up a copy in Seattle, and I tore through it over the past week - the same week in which Braverman has been racing in her first Iditarod. I knew the book was not just a rosy picture of the joys of hanging out with adorable sled dogs, and indeed, I found it quite intense and often upsetting from start to finish. Not in a bad way, just in the sad and angry way of one woman reading about the trials of another woman - ranging from patronization and dismissal to sexual harassment and assault. Braverman does an expert job of describing how she has grappled with fear and confusion and loneliness, fighting her way to a place of self-assertion and self-understanding and courage.