Blair Braverman

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North. Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was nineteen, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Blair faces down physical exhaustion—being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a whiteout blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police—and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land. Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of the journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.

Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north. By the time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land. Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.

Naty Corbett

Oh wow... This was a ride. I could not put this book down yet at the same time it hurt to read. The amount of trauma and abuse this woman suffered throughout her life and her relationships is heartbreaking, yet something far too many of us women live with. 
The chosen families she was able to find in her life that sustained her when she needed it is something all of us need, people who we can rely on that will not judge us.

Ari Hertz

Blair-if you're reading this-I first want to thank you for filling my twitter feed with dog pics and inspiring stories. It's a nice respite from that hellsite.

Thanks to her twitter, I knew Braverman was a compelling storyteller before starting this book. She proves herself again and again with vivid descriptions of the unique solitude of the North, the magic of dogsledding, and a tender, unlikely friendship with a shopkeeper in Northern Norway. While the narrative is a bit plodding and wandering at times, her stories about wilderness survival (e.g., racing with her own team in the afterword, getting lost in a blizzard on a dog sled in Northern Sweden, waking to find herself buried under feet of snow in Svalbard, spending a night in the Norwegian woods trying and failing to hitchhike to an old friend's town, etc.) really shine. One of my favorite things about this book is the slow yet satisfying growth Braverman undergoes. She initially defines herself in relation others and describes slipping into passivity following experiences with assault and harassment that removed her sense of agency, leaving her lost and confused. Over the years, she finds within herself a well of strength, joy, and love, and the world is better for it.

Liz Whitehead

I started following Blair on Twitter around 6 months to 1 year ago and I think she’s great (wonderful dog content). I was excited to start this book and now being on the other side I was a little disappointed. It was okay. If you’re looking for a book that spends a lot of time focusing on a woman in northern Norway boy this is the book for you. I think overall the writing and the stories were fine (a little too much Norway imo) but the back and forth of time and all over the place-ness left me disoriented and I often was trying to calculate what year it was and if this was before or after Norway the first, second, or third time. Actually im not even sure how many times she went to Norway. After the first trip when she was 16 it felt like she never left. I think it could have done with some time and place markers before each chapter or new story. 
I’ve read some of her other pieces she writes for magazines so I know she’s not a bad writer and if she comes out with another book I will be sure to read it.

Bryan Alexander

How does a young woman learn to live in the extreme north?

A friend recommended Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube to me because of our shared love for the north country. We both live in Vermont, which has a fairly serious winter. My wife and I are homesteaders, so we have learned a great deal about surviving in just barely sub-alpine conditions.

Braverman's memoir does meet those interests to a degree. We follow her to a remote location in Norway, as well as to an Alaska glacier. She learns how to race dogs, how to stay warm, and about those two different if allied cultures. Being very young - late teens through early 20s - she also learns about herself.

But exploring nature is really secondary to Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. The primary subject is surviving a dystopian world of male desire. Braverman's world is well stocked with terrible men who paw at her, mock, and pursue her. One repeatedly forces sex on her to the point of rape. Men her age, older, and younger ones, rich and poor target her ruthlessly. They are also generally awful: mean, badly dressed, ugly, ignorant. It's a sexual nightmare zone.

Only one male escapes this system, Aldrid, an elderly (65 years old, I think) shopkeeper who clearly has no designs on her. Blair ultimately finds a boyfriend she can be happy with, one not from either Norway or Alaska, but he's a transman (female to male) (here's an article about their relationship), and so stands out from the rest of the testosterone-crazed mob. (The hormone is important. Quince, the happy love interest, goes through mood changes as he becomes more masculine, disturbing Blair (183). Otherwise Quince is fine to her.)

Unusual for such a narrative, our narrator finds little comfort or support in other women. They rarely help her. Blair usually can't help them as they, inevitably, suffer the oafish or cruel attentions of men. Her mother isn't a significant character. Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube is not about sisterhood. Braverman seems to have better, at least more positive and rewarding, connections with sled dogs.

Also unusual is the heroine's lack of romantic imagination, or even interest. The text gives the impression of a teenager without any interest in sex or romance. She does not get disillusioned because she doesn't seem to come with any illusions. Male attention and threats come out of the blue, invading not only her personal space and body but also her mental landscape. Encountering other women's romantic interests, Blair does not intervene, either to compete for male attention or to pry women loose from bad situations. Indeed, in a passage near the book's center, she telling describes one female acquaintance in very alien terms:Two days of the week, I shared my tent with a musher named Stacy; but she was dating one of the male guides, and therefore seemed a member of another gender entirely. (159)Braverman turns to nature for solace, which is challenging given the north country's ferocity. There are fine anecdotes about accidentally getting buried in snow, of running a demanding sled dog race, of calming suddenly stranded tourists on the Alaskan glacier. There are some details about the environment - fewer than I would have expected. In the course of these experiences Blair is often anxious and/or physically miserable, and grows to confidence.

A significant chunk of the book goes to the sociology of a small Norwegian town, where Blair stays several times. This is less about arctic-zone stresses and more concerned with how people deal with each other in a remote location. We learn about lonely men, unhappy wives, family micropolitics, boating, sheep-shearing, and how people entertain themselves. The folk school is fascinating, but I wanted more. My overall feel for the town was sadness, or resignation.

Overall, a good memoir, especially for anyone interested in women's autobiography, gender, or the north country. I don't know to whom the dystopian element will appeal.

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

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