Louise Erdrich is an American poetess and novelist. She also wrote children’s books. Her works feature the characters and setting of Native America. She is also a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.
Among the writers of the second wave of the American writers, Erdrich is one of the most important and significant writers. Her novel The Plague of Doves was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize of Fiction in 2009. The novel also received the Anisfield-Wolf Award. Louise Erdrich received the National Book Award for fiction in 2012 for her novel The Round House.
In 2015, at the National Book Festival, she also received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She married Michel Dorris, an author. The two had written many works in collaboration. In 1995, they got separated.
Benchmark Book in Minneapolis is owned by Louise Erdrich. It is a small and independent bookstore that focuses on the Native Community in the Twin Cities and the Native American literature.
A Short Biography of Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich was born on 7th June 1954 in Little Falls in Minnesota. She is the eldest child of Rita Erdrich and Ralph Erdrich. His mother was Ojibwe, and her father was German-American. She also served as the tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation. Including the writers Heidi and Lise, Louise Erdrich had six siblings.
Erdrich had started writing stories in her childhood. The biggest literary influence in her life was her father. She has been greatly inspired by the letters written by her father to her.
In 1972, Erdrich attended Dartmouth College and was a member of the first co-educational class. At Dartmouth College, she met the Director of the Native American Studies program of the college. Erdrich attended the course being taught by Dorris. She has been greatly inspired by it and started investigating Native American Legacy on her own. This investigation had proved to have a tremendous effect on her writing. In 1979, she graduated with an A.B. in English. She then got enrolled at John Hopkins University. In 1979, she graduated from university with an M.A. degree.
While at John Hopkins University, she published her first poems. After graduation, she became a writer-in-residence at Dartmouth.
Michael Dorris left Dartmouth to conduct his research in New Zealand. However, he was in touch with Erdrich. The two started collaborating on various projects regardless of the distance between them. The short story “The World’s Greatest Fisherman” was co-authored. After the success of the story, it was extended into a larger work. The resulting novel Love Medicine was published in 1984.
Following Love Medicine, Erdrich wrote The Beet Queen with the same setting and narrative technique of Love Medicine. Other novels include Tracks, Tales of Burning Love, The Bingo Palace, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Painted Drum, and Four Souls. In each of these novels, Erdrich focuses on different aspects of characters and settings. She tells the stories that are interlocking and part of both standalone stories and fictional universes.
Erdrich published a collaborated novel, The Crown of Columbus, in 1991. She also wrote a novel based on magic realism, titled as The Antelope Wife. In 1999, the world won the World Fantasy Award.
Erdrich also published The Master Butchers Singing Club in 2003. It was based on her German heritage. In this book, to explore her German heritage, Erdrich employed the techniques of post-modernism as employed in the Love Medicines.
Louise Erdrich is also a renowned poet. In her poetry, she explores the same themes as that of her poetry. She published her first poem at John Hopkins University. In 1989, she published the Baptism of Desire, the collection of her poetry. The collection explores the themes of religion along with the description of motherhood, status and role of woman, and fertility through myth and history. Her poetic style is mainly narrative. Her poetry is in the form of a direct address or has dramatic narrative form.
In 1966, Louise Erdrich also started writing a book for children. She published her Grandmother’s Pigeon in 1966. The book also contains the style of magic realism. Other children’s books include The Birchbark House, The of Silence, Chickadee, The Porcupine, and Makoons.
Non-Fiction
Erdrich also wrote numerous non-fiction works that include books dealing with her experiences during her pregnancy and as a mother. The book The Blue Jay’s Dance accounts for her the time of her sixth pregnancy.
In 2008, after dedicating several years to books of young readers, Erdrich started writing adult fiction again with the publication of The Plague of Doves. The novel was followed by The Round House. Though it is not the sequel of The Plague of Doves, its emphasis on the same themes as that of The Plague of Doves.
In 2015, Erdrich was awarded the Library Congress Prize for American Fiction. In her most recent novel, The Future Home of Living God, Erdrich explores the new genre. The novel is a dystopian tale of the future in which when children begin showing the sign of reverse evolution, pregnancy becomes criminalized. The novel also shows Ojibwe culture and traditions. The novel is also compared with The Handmaids’ Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Personal Life
In 1981, Erdrich married Michael Dorris. Before the marriage, Dorris had adopted three Native American children. They also give birth to three children. Their collaborated works were published under the pseudonym of Milou North before getting success.
Michael Doriss had suffered from suicidal ideation and depression. His three adopted children also suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. They required constant attention. Seva, the adopted son, started sending them letters threatening them for money. Dorris and Erdrich took him to the court
In 1995, Doris and Erdrich got separated. In 1996, they divorced.
In 1999, Erdrich shifted to Minneapolis with the youngest children. She opened a bookstore named Books, Herbs, and Native Arts in collaboration with her sister Heidi.
Louise Erdrich’s Writing Style
Louise Erdrich is one of the most important and celebrated Native American writers. He works in a post-modernist outlook. It employed multiple perspective characters along with complex timelines and shifts in point-of-view or narration to narrate the stories based on people of Ojibwe both in a historical and modern setting. One of the major characteristics of her works includes shared settings and characters. This characteristic is much like the character of works of William Faulkner.
The writing style of Erdrich is narrative and indirectly points out the oral traditions of Native American culture. She describes her technique of writing as “s storyteller.” The following are the characteristics of the writing style of Louise Erdrich
Historical Captivity Narratives
The use of historical captivity narratives is one of the main writing tactics employed by Erdrich. One of the famous poems titled Captivity is the account of the married women who are held captive by the Indian tribe. The poem employed numerous literary elements such as guilt, sympathy, tentativeness, and submissiveness.
The poem is written in the first-person narrative in six stanzas. The main theme of the poem is fear and love. In the poem, Erdrich also employed swindlers or tricksters. These are the paranormal characters found in the folklores of the primitive people. In folklore, they function as the heroes who are sly deceptive. The captor of the narrator takes the role of the trickster of a swindler, therefore, reflecting the Native American Heritage of Erdrich.
An interesting fact about the poem is that it is based on a real-life story. Even before the poem opens, a feeling of truth and captivity has been provided by Erdrich. For example:
“He gave me a bisquit,
Which I had put in my pocket,
And not daring to eat it,
Buried it under a log,
Fearing, he had put something in it to make me love him.”
The above passage has been taken from the narrative of the captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. In 1676, Mrs. Mary was captivated by the Wampanoag Indian Tribe when Lancaster was demolished. ”
Colloquial Style and Lyrical Tone
The writing style of Louise Erdrich is colloquial. Her works have a lyrical tone that highlights the dialect and sound of the way characters speak. Her writing style, as mentioned before, is in oral tradition to the Native Americans. The importance of oral storytelling is stated by Simon Ortiz in the article “Introduction to American Indian Literatures as:
“The oral tradition is not just speaking and listening because what it means to other people who have grown up in that tradition and me is that the whole process,… Of that society in terms of its history, its culture, its language, its values, and subsequently, it’s literature. So it’s not merely a simple matter of speaking and listening but living that process” (184).
Those writers who have grown up in the culture of Native culture and importance are attached to the oral traditions and telling stories from the past. They also feel the need to preserve them by writing.
Louise Erdrich is a Native American writer who preserves the culture of Native Americans by writing the stories of the past and employing the writing style of oral traditions. For example, in the novel Love Medicine, the structure and format of the story are that of oral traditions.
Each individual story from the novel can stand alone and can be read as if the narrator is orally narrating the story to the readers. As the novel progresses, the stories are interconnected, Questions are answered themselves, characters appear to be more complete, and more clear details are given as the one character gives an insight of the other character. Moreover, the story is created with the individual views of the characters.
Contrast to the Traditional Western Ideals of Language: Native American Language mixed with English Prose.
The writing style of Louise Erdrich is in contrast to the traditional western ideals of language in numerous ways. In the first way, the traditional language of Native Americans is mixed with English Prose. For example, the characters of novels are speaking in their native tongues.
For example, in the first story, a number of instances, the characters speak in their native tongues. The first instance is when Gordie has been asked for a cigarette by the king, and Gordie replies, saying:
“You don’t say, can I have a cigarette. You say ciga swa?”
To this, Eli replies: “Them Michifs ask like that….you got to ask a real old-time Indian like me for the right words.”
The second instance of the use of native language is Eli comments on her physical state as: “I’m an old man…Akiwenzie.”
Contrast to the Traditional Western Ideals of Storytelling: Multiple Narrators
The employment of multiple narrators in the novels is another contrast to the traditional Western ideals of storytelling. Erdrich does not employ the omnipotent narrator who knows the inner feeling and thoughts of every character, and throughout the novel, he speaks in the same attitude and tone. However, she employed multiple narrators who give multiple perspectives to the novels and stories. For example, in novel Love Medicine, the story is narrated by multiple narrators who give multiple points of view.
Employing multiple narrators makes the readers analyze the story based on the different perspectives, and therefore, it provides an overall view of the character and story. For example, in the novel, different views about Lulu are given; in the earlier time, Nectar gives the first view, and in the later time, Lipsha gives another view. A balance is also given to the story that is narrated from multiple points of view: old or young, fame and female, etc.
Moreover, the novel told from multiple points of view does not have a linear format and chronological order. The time period jumps from story to story.
Louise Erdrich uses European prose-like format in a unique and different way by employing non-chronological format, multiple narrators, and incorporating the language of storytelling of oral traditions Native American. All of these techniques, in a way, reflect the cultural traditions.
Use of Magic Realism and Supernatural
Among the most celebrated American writers of the last thirty years, Louise Erdrich is the leading figure. She is known for the fragmented storytelling, imagistic sentences and ambiguous use of magic in her works. Even though her works do not directly fall under the category of magic realism, the Paris Review comments that Erdrich has been somehow employing magic realism in her works.
David Stirrup does not mention magic realism in his critical essays on the works of Erdrich; however, he mentions the presence of supernatural elements in her works aligning with the ancient religion of her Objiwe heritage. Critics like Alan Velie and Allan Chavkin also claim the presence of fantastical elements in the writings of Erdrich, thereby avoiding designating it works of magic realism. They also attach supernaturalism to the vague concept of the Native American religious tradition.
The writings of Erdrich are concerned with the complications and complexities of the arrangement of life in the twentieth century. However, magic and native themes in her works intersect are not explained by the critics who consider that there is a connection between these two.
While drawing similarities between the indigenous beliefs and magic in the works of Erdrich may appear to be something minor, however, there is great danger in doing so. By assuming the magic in Erdrich’s works appears from Ojibwe heritage, it removes it from the tradition of magic realism. Instead of interacting with the universal audience, Erdrich is then viewed as speaking for the small community to which belongs.
Moreover, the way supernatural elements are employed in Erdrich’s works fails the combination of believers of Native Americana and supernaturalism. When the critics consider the twenty years span between the two novels Track published in 1988 and The Plague of Doves published in 2008, a clear course emerges in the magic realism employed by Erdrich surpasses a simplistic relationship with the Native ancestry.
When the two novels, The plague of Doves and Tracks, are carefully analyzed, it is seen that, like other magic realists, Erdrich employed magic realism in a similar fashion. She employed supernaturalism as a kind of resistance to the colonial worldview and colonialism. Instead of demonstrating Nativesness by employing magic, Erdrich employed magic realism to mourn as well as defend her culture.
In Erdrich as a writer and her narratives, both show magical resistance through the progression of time and morphs into a vision of the new Native identity and rebirth of tribes that will retain a sense of supernatural in the post-colonial world.
Fragmentation and Assimilation
Some writers of the twentieth century have invented a new narrative form that would fit their revisionist agenda while also letting a place in which the oral and written storytelling can exist simultaneously. Due to this, an experimental multi-perspectival narration resulted.
This form of narration was initially used to convey the disruptive, chaotic, and fragmentary world. However, the limited use of the multi-perspectival narration resulted in the repetition of the non-inclusive nature on which ethic writers have been working against.
Louise Erdrich, being the Native American writer and important member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, provides a fictional revisionist history of Euro-American and Native American interaction in the form of short story cycle and multi-narration.
Erdrich is able to experiment with the traditional method of storytelling by employing the fragmented narration, which is at odds with and non-inclusive to the tribal traditions. In his first novel Love Medicine and in her latest work, LaRose, Erdrich employed fragmented forms. The fragmented form highlights the fragmented natures of the characters that are the representative of the tribe and working together to unite the remains of their culture after assimilation.
Love Medicine has been most both celebrated as an innovative work and disregarded for its form. The novel has received the critique of “frustrated narrative,” which lacks the persistent main character and a developing plotline that can be followed. Other works of Erdrich also employed fragmented multiple narrations, story cycles, and assimilation.
Conclusion
The writing style of Louise Erdrich in the novels and short stories has challenged the traditional writing methods used by the writers of the twentieth century. Fellow Native American authors and Leslie Marmon Silke, the leader of the Native American Renaissance views the unique writing style of Erdrich as an attempt to blend political, historical, and cultural clumsiness, while many other writers disregard her style by stating it to be intentionally confusing, academic, experimental, and privileging rather than politically engaged, substantive, and meaningful.
