Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

Biographies & Memoirs

Scully, Julia

Arts & Literature

Souvenir Press Ltd.

"Alaska, in its way, demands your full attention. Like a slap in the face, the assault of the weather, the landscape, the sheer physical effort of enduring forces memories further and further away." In Outside Passage Julia Scully regathers the memories of her childhood, and, like the strange territory and time they cover--the isolated far western Alaskan frontier before and during World War II--these memories demand our full attention. They begin with her immigrant parents' efforts to make a living during the Depression in California and the Pacific Northwest. Faced with illness and despair, Julia's father commits suicide when she is seven, and she and her older sister, Lillian, discover his body. Julia's mother then leaves her daughters in a San Francisco orphanage and goes to Alaska, searching for an economic toehold at the edge of the continent. Julia seeks comfort in the rituals of the orphanage--learning how to knit and darn, roller-skating outside after dinner, listening to One Man's Family on the radio. Trying to adapt, she submerges her memories: "It's not that I can't remember my mother or what it was like before . . . but I don't think about any of it because, when I do, my chest aches." Eventually, her mother buys a roadhouse--the only public place in Taylor, Alaska, it serves the settlement's small-time gold miners--and at last sends for her daughters to rejoin her. Despite the cold and isolation of Alaska, there are small blessings for Julia to count: secretive summer wildflowers and berries on the seemingly barren landscape, and the wild animals--reindeer, fox, and wolves--that roam the endless tundra. The young Julia serves whiskey to the rough customers who play poker at the ramshackle roadhouse, pans gold with a beguiling prospector, kisses her first boyfriend--one of the soldiers ordered to Alaska to defend against a possible Japanese invasion. As she begins to understand the mysteries of sexuality and her parents' secrets, she also begins to build the privations and the minor pleasures and the perceptions of her childhood into a platform for a wider and fuller life. In the same way, she has transformed her memories of that childhood into a written record sometimes as painful but always as beautiful as the cold, clear streams under which the gold lay hidden.

Outside Passage:: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

Random House]

1. The first chapter of Outside Passage is a flash forward, yet chronologically, the story really begins with Chapter 2. Why do you think the author chose this narrative device? Is it effective? 2. In recounting her childhood, how does the narrator suggest the importance of her memories of her father, as few and hazy as they might have been? 3. During her two year stay in the San Francisco orphanage, the young Billie finds ways of extracting emotional sustenance from this difficult situation. What are some of these ways? How does this same ability to find the positive within hard circumstances impact on her adjustment to life after the orphanage? 4. In some ways the orphanage provides the two young girls in Outside Passage with cultural advantages, associations and learning opportunities not previously available to them. Today the very word 'orphanage' causes a shudder; yet we hear of the many failings of the foster care system which replaced them. How might the author and her sister have fared better or worse if they had existed in today's system? 5. In desperation, Rose chose to leave her two daughters in San Francisco and return alone to Alaska. Why do you think she decided to leave her children in an orphanage rather than taking them with her? Was this the best decision for herself? For her children? 6. Reunited with her girls, Rose seems like a permissive parent, imposing 'no rules,' as Billie observes. How would you explain this behavior: is it evidence of a lack of caring; a guilty response to having abandoned them in the orphanage; does it represent a hope that this freedom might provide a healing process for the girls? 7. Billie expresses positive feelings about the men who frequent her mother's roadhouse. What is the basis for her feelings and do you think they reflect the real nature of these men or a child's idealization? 8. Rose's secrecy about her emotional and sexual life impacts on the life of the narrator increasingly as she reaches puberty. How does Rose's behavior and attitudes reflect the mores of that period in American life? In what ways might her story and that of her daughters been different had they lived in a contemporary setting? 9. Many reviewers have described the writing style in Outside Passage as 'understated.' Does this style work to good effect in telling the story? How so? 10. Two incidents in the book might be seen as turning points in the narrator's life. One is the scene in which she witnesses the malamute shot by the chief of police, the other occurs some years later when she is struck by the beauty of the sun rising over the frozen sea. In what ways are these moments particularly meaningful in her emotional development? 11. The New York Times reviewer observed that '...Scully's imagination, the tool with which she probes her mother's life, is a moral imagination, whose root is forgiveness...' Do you agree? In what way is this 'forgiveness' evident? 12. In another review ( The Cleveland Plain Dealer ) the statement appears that in Outside Passage , the 'setting and voice ... perfectly mesh.' What do you understand this to mean? 13. The author was formerly editor of Modern Photography Magazine and has written extensively about the art of photography. Some readers and reviewers have commented on the photographic, i.e. strongly visual, nature of her writing. Do you see evidences of this quality and what is the ultimate result in the effectiveness of the story being told? 14. While Outside Passage is, in effect, a 'coming-of-age' story, it is set against the background of two major events in the 20th Century history of this country: The Great Depression and The Second World War. What sense of these events does the reader glean as observed through the eyes of a young girl? 15. In Time Magazine , a writer described Outside Passage as 'a simple reminder of the immense power of a child's love, which can last through terrible neglect,' while, as mentioned above, the New York Times reviewer found it 'rooted in forgiveness.' Are there other emotions and feelings that can be inferred about the narrator's attitude towards her mother?

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Community & Culture

Modern Library

A fascinating collection of portraits of the townspeople of Heber Springs, Arkansas. Disfarmer was not well liked by the townfolk but they came to him to get their photos taken. He made no attempt to elicit a smile or adhere to any other other convention of commercial portraiture poses. So the photos tend to be of people as they were; not as they might have been "photographed." 135 pages; illustrated through out with b&amp;w photographic plates; 10.25 x 11 inches.

Disfarmer: The Heber Springs portraits, 1939-1946

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Addison House

[Library Edition Audiobook CD in sturdy Vinyl case.]  [Read by Celeste Lawson] When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Julia sought comfort in the rituals of the orphanage -- learning to knit, roller-skating after dinner, listening to One Man's Family on the radio -- and tried to adapt. But two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska, where she had leased a roadhouse in the tiny settlement of Taylor. Julia had no idea what to expect when she arrived, but to her surprise she found a healing power in the stark beauty of the vast tundra -- the summer wildflowers and berries, the reindeer, foxes, and wolves. Later she reveled in the boisterous, chaotic boomtown atmosphere that prevailed when thousands of American troops descended on Nome at the outbreak of World War II. A lyrical and affecting memoir of those years, Outside Passage is simultaneously an emotional account of a young girl's first steps into adulthood and a unique portrait of a vanished frontier life.

Blackstone Audiobooks

When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska, where she had leased a roadhouse in the tiny settlement of Taylor. Julia had no idea what to expect when she arrived, but to her surprise, she found a healing power in the stark beauty of the vast tundra. Later, she reveled in the boisterous, chaotic boomtown atmosphere that prevailed when thousands of American troops descended on Nome at the outbreak of World War II. Outside Passage is a lyrical and affecting memoir of those years, simultaneously an emotional account of a young girl’s first steps into adulthood and a unique portrait of a vanished frontier life.

Historical

University of Alaska Press

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Books by Scully, Julia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Scully, Julia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

Outside Passage:: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Disfarmer: The Heber Springs portraits, 1939-1946

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood