Books can be magical and transport readers over many miles -- "Water Mask" will take readers through Alaska and to some notable places in the Lower 48. Photo of the book and postcards from Alaska, by Kaycee Davis
Devine, Monica, “Water Mask.” University of Alaska Press, 2019. 176 pages. 1602233721 $18.95 978-1602233720
Monica Devine’s memoir, “Water Mask” made me think of this quote by Dr. Seuss: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
It is true, and if your plans don’t have you living a full Alaska life, you can read “Water Mask” and experience life in Alaska as Devine has.
Devine was a traveling speech therapist and traveled all over Alaska. Through her encounters, readers learn of loss, longing, finding, with heaps of adventure along the way. “Water Mask” was a finalist in the Willa Literary Awards, and she has received other awards for her many works from the National Federation of Press Women and the Alaska State Poetry Contest. She was a Golden Kite nominee, and she received best creative non-fiction in the literary journal New Letters for the piece “On the Edge of Ice,” which is in “Water Mask.”
The book is not “feminist,” but it is told through the eyes and experiences of mostly women, women such as herself, her mother, Alaska Native women, the mothers of the children she works with as a speech therapist, and her friends.
Her stories are true and real. So much so that someone thinking they want to come up to Alaska to live off the land without research will think twice before committing: One can die on these adventures, even when one is knowledgeable about the terrain and conditions.
Devine opens her book with an essay called “Mission of Motherhood.” Through a character sitting in Mendeltna Creek Lodge named Agnes, she tells how life is fragile, especially for children. The elements spare no one, even when the parents, who are often experienced in whatever they are doing, are with them.
Readers are pulled along and glimpse into the lives of her life as a teacher and into the lives of her students and parents. In a chapter called “Things Fall Apart” she describes giving a four-year-old in Anaktuvuk Pass a test where she pointed to shoes, clothing, things we eat. He told her, “I don’t care.” Being a good teacher, she explains how her questions were “excessive, out of context, and held no meaning for him.”
She describes his culture and what matters to him, how his parents raised their children, with her young student watching his parents, whose world is closer to nature and the animal world.
She compares this to her world and how she was raising her children, “preparing them for college from the moment they were born.” She concludes with, “One way of educating is not better than the other, just different.” And she tells how she made changes to help her visits with her students, talking to elders and learning the vocabulary they knew at home, and joining in on activities such as berry-picking and grocery shopping with the families to find relevance.
Devine takes readers along on a trip through the Inside Passage and weaves it with experiences at a horse ranch where she just completed a workshop called “Landscape and Literature of the Horse.” She learns patience and facing fears with her horse at the ranch, contrasting it with seas that are calm and a boat that runs smoothly until the seas are no longer calm and the boat has a loose rudder and other problems that can happen in the ocean.
Devine’s essays bring readers into experiences with characters from her real life whose likeness few will ever meet. She states that, “proficiency comes through experience and the true grit of flying by the seat of your pants” as she launches into a story about a Minnesota pilot who has only been in Alaska for “a couple weeks.” We feel her horror as, once airborne, the pilot pulls out a map and studies it, and her feeling of “flying inside a bottle of milk” in thick fog. Rationally we know she lives to tell the tale, but there is relief when they land.
No matter where she takes readers, the descriptions are vivid and employ the senses. This is the kind of a book that you might want to read with a map of Alaska next to you to see where Devine is taking you next, to appreciate just how far she travels.
The book is a fun read, but not light, and can be read cover to cover or essay by essay.
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