A young woman enters a whole new world of attraction in a community struggling with generations of loss of land and culture.
Yasmeen's tradition-bound mother wants her to stay in Montreal, get married, and have babies. But the young Syrian-Canadian wants more. Her appetite for adventure leads her to a teaching job in the northern Quebec village of Saqijuvik. Eager to adopt her new home and its Inuit inhabitants, Yasmeen embraces every experience that comes her way: camping on the tundra, hunting for ptarmigan, sewing with the local women. She plunges into her northern adventure, no holds barred.
But it's 1983 and instead of the ideal, pristine Arctic Yasmeen imagined, she uncovers a contradictory world of igloos and pool halls, Sedna and Jesus, raw caribou and alcohol. In the middle of everything is Joanasi, a beautiful but volatile man who leads her into territory that is almost as unsettling as the land itself.
Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik is a story of powerful love and potent lust. It is a tale of adventure, of the attempt to bridge worlds and cultures, of self-discovery in the face of the unknown. Set in the vast and beautiful North, it pushes past the standard narrative of southerners bringing "civilization" to a people who have survived in the most unforgiving of environments for over a thousand years.
