One Half
By Inga Magga
“For me, Sámi was not just another language, it didn’t feel foreign in the same way as other languages, but it was foreign, wild as a river.”
Ibbá returns to her family’s ancestral home in Kuttura, where she begins to ask questions of her ageing parents, and why she never learned to speak Sámi. She begins unravelling the past, going back to the postwar years when Sámi children from remote villages were separated from their families by being forced into boarding schools for most of the year. As Ibbá uncovers her family’s secrets, she has to ask herself what Sámi means to her.
One Half is a moving novel about the postwar generations of Sámi children, today’s urban Sámi identity, and reconnecting to one’s own roots.
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Reviews
“A beautiful novel about Ibbá’s personal journey into her family history and, at the same time, her own identity.”
”Works of literary merit and nuance, such as One Half, are necessary - and a joy to read.”
“One Half addresses the question of identity in a versatile and compelling way. For the majority population, the novel opens up on Sámi history and the overtly colonial role of Finnish boarding schools, and the multitudes of lived experiences within the borders of a single country.”
