Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North

Blair Braverman has always felt drawn to the north and the cold and the snow. As a teenager she lived in Norway and had some bad experiences but she went back, even further north, and made the life that she was looking for.

Content warning for abuse and sexual assault.
I enjoyed Blair’s outlook on life. She sees bad things that happen to her (cold weather survival, getting buried in snow, abuse from an authority figure, sexual assault) as just, things that happened, rather than signs that she is or is not on the right path. They’re not holding her back but they’re not particularly driving her either. I also really enjoy winter/cold, though not as much as she does, and in a world where I feel it’s always expected to love summer and show more heat Blair is, pun intended, a breath of fresh air. show less

I'm not that big on personal journey/coming-of-age memoirs, but I liked how she framed her own story within the northern settings—Alaska, north Norway, and Wisconsin; glaciers, sled dogs, and grumpy old men. In particular, she didn't turn the grumpy old men into caricatures—they had their gruff and charming aspects, but they were also dysfunctional, lonely, crude, and just plain strange, which I found much more effective. Braverman's passages about her dogs won me over as well—she loved them as well, perhaps better, than just about anyone else in the book. (Another winner on the DTDD™ balance sheet.) But mostly I enjoyed this for its unexpectedness, and the twists and turns in what could have otherwise been a conventional story. show more Besides the old men and sled dogs, I came away with oddly loving feelings for an old store full of antique junk, which is no small feat.

Also, let's be honest, it's August in New York City and anything with a lot of ice and negative temperatures warms (cools?) my heart right now. show less

I am just stunned by Braverman's fearlessness.

Cold weather makes me want to read about colder weather; dog sledding has all those appealing doggies. Happily this was lying about the house waiting for me.

Be warned: there isn't nearly as much dog sledding as I would have liked. Unlike say Winterdance (a beloved memoir with lots about training and such) the sport isn't the point. The point is loving the cold and the Northwoods. The point is that nature isn't even a tiny bit as scary as the men a teen girl/young woman has to put up with.

The fearlessness is in the revelation which astounds me, even as so many women are speaking up about sexual assaults and harassment they have withstood. Each such revelation astounds me.

Yes, I know that show more the victim isn't to blame, but I also know the abuse and indignity that is heaped upon anyone telling her experience. To dredge it up, to spend years remembering, and then to share that with others: it is a strength and a heroism I can't begin to imagine. Someday may we all be so brave.





Library copy show less

As a ten-year-old, the author spent a year in Norway and developed a lasting connection with the idea of herself as an arctic adventurer. Her second stay in Norway, as a high school exchange student in a household with an encroaching father, left her with deep self-doubt and distrust.
Still determined to make herself into an Arctic adventurer, she has more positive and negative experiences, the negatives mostly to do with men. How not surprising. But this isn't self-hagiography, more a discussion of her personal journey to accepting that faltering or doubt doesn't diminish the progress or milestones.

Braverman paints such a vivid picture of a cold landscape and colder people (some of whom have a surprising core of warmth inside). This is what I love about memoir: This is not a person with whom I have much in common, living a life that would make me miserable, but she makes me interested in her growth, satisfied in her stead.

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube was an interesting memoir but I felt it needed more sled dogs and far less men are terrible (thus leading to Braverman's intense insecurity to which the reader is subjected at very close quarters).

Braverman's coming-of-age memoir is as raw, wild, and visceral as the Arctic. Great read.