A bold Bontok teen endeavors to live among those who treat her people as savages in this striking YA historical novel, one of the winners of the 2024 National Children's Book Award of the Philippines.
Sixteen-year-old Luki, who lives in U.S.-controlled Bontok in the Philippine Islands, signs up to attend the 1904 World's Fair because the alternative--marriage--enrages her. She seeks instead the "sweet land of liberty" and, with other village members, takes a tumultuous weeks-long voyage to Saint Louis, Mo. When the fair opens, Luki and the others remain on display in the Philippine Reservation, where paying spectators watch the "wild people" plant rice like "real Igorots." The fair attendees complain, however, that Luki and the other Bontok people won't dance or sing, don't wear enough clothes, and aren't "headhunters." Luki wonders how to live in a place that advertises freedom but won't let her be anything other than an amusement who fits the Americans' idea of a show.
Luki's confessional first-person narrative is a masterful delivery of discovering the joy of choice and the tragedy of hatred. She shares brilliantly cutting observations, saying of Theodore Roosevelt, for example, "There were crumbs on the mustache from something he'd eaten.... He didn't look like much." She is refreshingly daring, pushing an American soldier into a fire, pitching her would-be husband into the sea, and instinctively flipping upside-down on a tree branch to save a girl. The teen also expresses genuine discomfort, such as "I can't tell if they want to embrace us or eat us." Wild Song by Candy Gourlay (Bone Talk) is successful in its enormous scope even as it portrays meticulous, tender growth in its main character. An exceptional feat. --Samantha Zaboski, editor and book reviewer