Wild Song

Gr 7 Up–This companion to Bone Talk features Luki, a teenage girl of the Bontok, the indigenous Igorot people in the Philippines, in the early 20th century. Seeking to find her own identity and future in the wake of her mother’s death and wanting to shed the weight of community expectations, Luki seizes an opportunity to travel to the United States as part of an exhibition of tribal people from all across the globe at the World’s Fair in St. Louis. What begins as an impulsive escape from all that she has ever known becomes an adventure that reshapes Luki’s ideas of friendship, freedom, family, and home. This historical fiction offers a fresh perspective on the World’s Fair and the history of American imperialism. The beliefs, practices, traditions, and values of varying cultures are treated respectfully in this narrative, and it contains many vignettes that compare Igorot ways with those of Americans and Europeans at the turn of that era. The realities of race, class, and gender in this place and period of history are rendered here with words that are honest and moving without being overly emotional or moralistic.