This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together

by Jon Mooallem

As soon as Genie entered the capitol building, a state senator recognized her and enthusiastically introduced her around. One after another, lawmakers kept thanking her. “They would shake hands or hug me, each with tears in their eyes,” she remembered. An unfamiliar energy seemed to be crackling in the air around her: the same prestige that would estrange her from her colleagues at KENI in the following months, then eventually get her elected to a seat in this very chamber. One lawmaker invited her to sit with him. And then, with all of Alaska listening, on a statewide radio hookup that Genie herself had organized for the speech, Alaska’s Speaker of the House called the session to order and surprised Genie by formally introducing her and asking her to stand. She was struck dumb—thrown into “complete stupefaction,” she said—when everyone in the chamber suddenly stood up, too, and started applauding.