Q: Why did you have Alaska choose the name “Alaska” for herself?
The idea initially came to me while watching the movie The Royal Tennenbaums, which features a cover of the Velvet Underground song, “Stephanie Says,” part of which goes, “She’s not afraid to die / The people all call her Alaska.”
I liked the name Alaska because it’s grand and mysterious and far away, part of our country but a mythologized part, in much the same way that Alaska herself is (disastrously) mythologized by her classmates.
I also liked it because of what it actually means. It is often translated “that which the sea breaks against,” and I think that is Alaska’s experience of herself: She feels that the sea is breaking against her, again and again, with all the incumbent turmoil, excitement, and pain.