My Name Is Not Easy Summary
Debby Dahl Edwardson

My Name Is Not Easy Overview

In September of 1960, a young boy and his two younger brothers are sent away from their village on the Alaskan tundra to attend a Catholic boarding school a hundred miles south. The family are Inupiaq Eskimos and the boy knows that he will have to change his name to Luke because his Inupiaq name is too difficult for English-speaking people to pronounce. When they arrive, they learn that they are forbidden to speak their native language by the priests and nuns and are to adopt the ways of white people. There are other Eskimo children at the school as well as Indian and white children but there is animosity between the groups. Eventually, though, the students learn that they have more in common than they are different and they grow to become a family learning to support each other.