Split Tooth Summary
Tanya Tagaq

Split Tooth Overview

Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth is a coming-of-age novel following the unnamed protagonist and narrator, an Inuit girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s. As a teenager, she becomes pregnant in an environment characterized by rampant substance abuse, sexual violence, the residential school system and its intergenerational impacts, and the power of the land. Tagaq uses a mixture of short prose chapters in both past and present tense and poetry to create a fast-paced, atmospheric narrative which blurs the lines between contemporary reality, history, and myth.