Place of the Pretend People
Place of the Pretend People is a vivid, sensitive account of one woman's choice to live and teach in a Yup'ik Eskimo village and later to make her home in Interior Alaska. A fascinating and unusual memoir, Carolyn Kremers' book is both a journey of cultural discovery and a story of spiritual and artistic seeking. The author offers readers an intimate encounter with Yup'ik culture, modern and traditional, as she describes teaching music and English in Tununak, a village tucked along the windswept Bering Sea coast of Western Alaska.
Kremers' experiences in Tununak and elsewhere provide keen insight into the lives and land of the people she grows to love. Through her friendships with Yup'ik people and others, some of the mysteries of life in a challenging northern environment are unraveled, and she begins to understand some of the mysteries within her own heart.
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Book details
- Author
- Carolyn Kremers
- Imprint
- Alaska Northwest Books, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 250
- Formats
- Paperback, Hardcover
- Subjects
- History › Indigenous
History › United States › State & Local › Pacific Northwest (OR, WA)
Social Science › Customs & Traditions - Topics
- Yup'ik culture · Alaska · Indigenous peoples · memoir · cultural discovery · music teaching · spiritual journey · village life
- ISBN-13
- 9780882408552 (Paperback)9780882404783 (Hardcover)
About the author
CAROLYN KREMERS is a poet, literary nonfiction writer, and lifelong musician who holds degrees from Stanford, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her books include Upriver, The Alaska Reader: Voices from the North, and Place of the Pretend People: Gifts from a Yup'ik Eskimo Village.
Kremers received the 2023 Alaska Literary Award and a Fulbright Scholar appointment at Buryat State University in Russia in 2008–09 and 2015–16. Upriver was a finalist for the 2014 Willa Award in Poetry. She designed and implemented the MFA creative nonfiction program at Eastern Washington University and taught for many years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Carolyn lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.