Louise Erdrich : The Aesthetics of Mino Bimaadiziwin

The "wild zone" of the Native American women-following Louise Erdrich's Tracks in between the wilderness of the American prairies and the urban living Louise Erdrich is the most famous, and probably one of the most important female writers of Native American origin who, in the past twenty years, has fully-rounded and produced many novels for which has received not only numerous awards for their exquisite value and depth, the native sensibility and writing magic, but also, because of their challenging ideas and standpoints which attract huge interest among the reviewers , the academic circles and the critical community, has fascinated and appealed to even more general public, gaining devoted millions of fans worldwide. Erdrich is an artist among the writers and a writer among the artistic souls; her star shines brightly and lightens the grayness of the dark, stormy literary sky offering an alternative way out of the monotony. Her narrative technique reflects with an outstanding skill and craftwork above all, mainly because of the multiform and wide-ranging points of view of the events and the intertextual allusions, time disruptions and dislocation are so masterly interwoven that both the readers (and the critical eye of the reviewers) remain speechless by the jaw-dropping displays of emotion and natural complexity by this woman-genius. Correspondingly, Erdrich intertwines these writing techniques with some narrative elements from the Ojibwe and Chippewa Indians' oral tradition and heritage with such an outstanding coherence, which makes them enlivened, palpable and tangible, realistic, human-like. She bravely dares to subversively challenge the canonical narrative trajectory of the American novel, to subvert and even destabilize the new narrative perspective-this woman-author, with an exceptionally effective gift for stylization is fearlessly confronting and presenting the cruel realities of the lives of the Native Americans, has been harshly criticized because of her complexities of situations (which at times borderline with confusion) and constantly moving fast forward/fast backward (erase and rewind memory play-gaming as well) on the horizontal time and space axis, as well as because of (at times) chaotic intermingling of the various stories and characters' lives whose intertextual overflow from one novel into another is quite confusing and difficult to follow up. The entirety of the existence, the creation or the art of formation, designing, as well as the history of the Native Americans from the past up until today has been an extremely complex, entwined, and deeply sensitive process which has not only been present, but has also been

Louise Erdrich's Tracks explores the tyrannies of the Anishinaabeg and their present condition. Her characters' disposition shows their inner wildness either to withhold the tribal identity and resist or to establish a new identity in the foreign society. The struggle of the Chippewas continues till date as their perpetual fear of the Whites' encroachment of the native lands and their rights haunts them. Tracks recounts and retraces the history of colonial violence that has affected the lives of the Chippewas. Though they struggle for sovereignty, the Chippewas have enslaved themselves by adapting the non-Natives' culture. Erdrich portrays how the changing times and impact of westernization has altered the native's way of life. Erdrich also points out the necessity to retain the native spirit regardless of the changing times.

2002

Jacobs offers readers abundant contextual information pertinent to a critical understanding of Erdrich\u27s novels. Her purpose is similar to Susan Scarberry-Garcia\u27s in Landmarks of Healing: A Study of House Made of Dawn (1990); both books are valuable reference tools for newcomers to their authors\u27 works and to American Indian Literature in general. This volume will be of particular benefit to teachers of introductory courses in Native American literature covering Erdrich\u27s fiction

Nordlit, 2004

Louise Erdrich's 1998 novel The Antelope Wife may not strike the reader as a politicized text at first glance. The tone of the novel wavers between tragicomic and comic, and the interrelated stories that form its narrative seem to draw more attention to the personal and universal dimensions of human suffering than to its historical and political causes. Appearances aside, the narrative enacts a sharp critique of the legacy of Euroamerican conquest and the dualistic Western worldview underlying it, and I believe that Erdrich's method of displacement and reinvention may be even more effective than a direct challenge would be. One of the most widely acclaimed Native American writers; she is Anishinaabe-Metis (Ojibway/Chipewa) 1 on her mother's side, German-American on her father's, and an enrolled member of the North Dakota Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The Anishinaabe have a long tradition of oral as well as written literature in a variety of genres, including song poems, memoirs and life stories, historical and cultural accounts, and according to literary critic and writer Gerald Vizenor, "claim more published writers than any other tribe on the [North American] continent" (qtd. in Blaeser 3). Although Erdrich has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University (1979) she credits her literary skill more to having grown up in an extended family of storytellers. Her sisters Heid and Lise are also published writers. 2 Louise's literary production includes seven novels, beginning with Love Medicine (1984) which won a National 1 See Gerald Vizenor's The People Named the Chippewa, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 for a discussion of the interchangeable terms Ojibway and Chippewa, both European corruptions of a Native word whose meaning scholars disagree on. The people refer to themselves a s Anishinaabe (pl. Anishinabeg).

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 1993

Pakistan journal of humanities and social sciences, 2022

This paper examines Louise Erdrich's practice of promoting the oral tradition and magical realism as a way of preserving Native American culture in Tracks. She writes stories in the novel to assimilate Native American culture in modern times and this ultimately helps the Native traditions to find their way to modern readers. She represents magical elements in a realistic manner totally opposed to western concepts of magical realism. This study argues that Erdrich uses stories and magical realism as a tool to not only promote Native American culture but also preserve it. It is qualitative research and Gerald Vizenor's Theory of Resistance and Survivance has been used to analyze the text. The textual analysis reveals that oral tradition and magical realism have deep roots in Native American culture and Erdrich uses them to promote as well as preserve this culture.

IX-th International Symposium "Contemporary Issues of Literary Criticism: Tradition and Contemporary Literature" (Tbilisi, Georgia). Ed. Irma Ratiani, 2015

The article explores the problematic relationship between orality and the written word in a sample of Native American writing. Louise Erdrich’s work partakes of the growing trend in Native American art and literature and, as a whole, Native American Studies, to reconsider the traumatic event of colonization and its aftermath, and in this act of re-membering, to find strategies of self-relocation in the fragmented whereabouts of today’s world. Erdrich and the writers of her generation are extremely sensitive to the condition of unbelonging which is the logical consequence of the state of multiple belonging. For Native American peoples, this sense of severing has even deeper implications as they tend to assert individual identity in a very particular form of kinship within their community, which consists of family members, people, places, animals, the world of the deceased, the world of the Great Spirits. I suggest that when deprived of the orality that had once provided them with the means to reconnect themselves to mythical reality, and the native language that would operate as the magical password, Native American writers impart intensely performative properties to the language they use and their writing serves to establish new, meaningful connections to the multiple worlds that sustain their community.

Istanbul University - DergiPark, 2008

In postcolonial literature racial and ethnic identities are not fixed but are subject to shaping and reshaping. Having been ascribed to and associated with cultural representations, nativity, rewriting of history, and reconstruction of identity, postcolonialism offers a space to discuss the issues of identity in the writings from the margins of the contemporary world. Postcolonial literary productions, more often than not, point to marginalized writers' attempt to preserve their cultures and to ensure continuity. Writing for cultural survival, postcolonial authors focus on the celebration of their liminal status, and, in the process, deconstruct and reconstruct cultural codes and modes of representation. In such a scenario, history, politics, and even culture itself are altered, rediscovered, and reassessed in the voices of those who previously had no voice. Rejecting the unitary, monolithic, and monochromic versions of western textual and cultural discourse, postcolonial authors stress the polyphonic and heteroglossic concepts of a poststructuralist discourse. Native American literatures from the United States are similar, in their storing history, resuscitating orality in the written text, and countering constructions of natives by the master-narratives. Native authors like Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and N. Scott Momaday create texts that communicate the lived experiences of the native peoples from the past and their hopes for the future. But native characters are different from one another in their resistance to or acceptance of assimilation into mainstream culture. One native character reflects some native people's attempts to resist assimilation and to work towards the upkeep of native cultures. But another native character deliberately chooses to become the subjugated mirror image of his or her oppressors, because that choice, to him or her, seems to be the only way for survival. This paper focuses on the second character type, Pauline Puyat, a narrator in Louise Erdrich's novel, Tracks. Analysis of Pauline reveals the process of "othering" that a native may undergo in the course of choosing a better or at least different life.

2020

How is nature/land as a teacher and as a source of healing depicted in her stories? How is nature/land represented in her stories as a source of survival, challenges and happiness? How do Ojibwe life and Ojibwe landscapes change in her stories?

Critical Insights: Inequality, 2018

Published in Critical Insights: Inequality, a textbook for high school and college students. In the era of post-colonial and decolonialized literature, Louise Erdrich tackles inequality issues of race and gender in her 1988 prequel Tracks. While Erdrich tackles the serious issues of racism and poverty, what makes Tracks a unique resistance to colonialism is Erdrich’s appropriation and manipulation of the Native American stereotypes, the Savage and Noble Savage. In a unique twist, Erdrich applies the masculine stereotypes to Pauline and Fleur, the two main female characters. Through such a choice, Erdrich establishes that Native stereotypes are not innate, but created through social actions and perceptions of both the white and Native communities.