Louise+Erdrich

 Born to a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father, Louise Erdrich weaves her rich cultural background into the brilliantly complex characters found in her novels. Through her exploration of Native American themes in her works, she sheds new light on the struggles—of the past, present, and quite possibly the future—First Nations Peoples must face.

Erdrich enrolled in Dartmouth College in 1972, the first year the university permitted the enrollment of women, and she graduated with a BA. Throughout her career as a student, Erdrich was determined to garner knowledge and experience from a wide range of places; consequently she ended up taking, as she described, “some really crazy jobs” that would later serve as inspiration (Nelson). These jobs included being a waitress, lifeguard, poetry teacher at prisons, a construction flag signaler, and last but not least as an editor at a Boston Indian Council newspaper called the //Circle//. This job proved to be very influential in Erdrich’s writing career; she realized that “[s]ettling into that job and becoming comfortable with an urban community — which is very different from the reservation community — gave me another reference point. There were lots of people with mixed blood, lots of people who had their own confusions. I realized that this was part of my life — it wasn't something that I was making up — and that it was something I //wanted// to write about” (Nelson).

The author’s devotion to writing stories, however, began back when she was a child and Erdrich’s heritage taught her the value of a story. “People in [Native American] families make everything into a story.... People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break, and fall, it gets into you somehow." Her family’s support went even further, Erdrich recalls her father paying her five cents for every story she completed, and her mother would weave “strips of construction paper together and stapled them into book covers. So at an early age [she] felt [her]self to be a published author earning substantial royalties" (Nelson).

[|Interview with Louise Erdrich]



Her novel //Tracks//, is only one facet of Erdrich’s multi-part series beginning with //Love Medicine//. The series follows a community struggling with their vanishing culture, land, the meaning of tradition, with the outside society, and most intriguingly, with themselves. //Tracks// focuses on the trials of wild, mythic Fleur Pillager as she fights to keep her land and the old ways alive, through the eyes of an old Indian man, Nanapush, who has come to care for her as a daughter, and Pauline Puyat, a disturbed, broken girl that blurs the line between dark and grey.

Novels

 * //Love Medicine//, Holt (New York,NY), 1984, expanded edition, 1993.
 * //The Beet Queen//, Holt (New York,NY), 1986.
 * //Tracks//, Harper (New York,NY), 1988.
 * (With husband, Michael Dorris) //The Crown of Columbus//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 1991.
 * //The Bingo Palace//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 1994.
 * //Tales of Burning Love//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 1996.
 * //The Antelope Wife//, HarperFlamingo (New York,NY), 1998.
 * //The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2001.
 * //The Master Butchers Singing Club//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2003.
 * //Four Souls//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2004.
 * //A Plague of Doves//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2008.
 * //Shadow Tag,// HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2010

Poetry

 * //Jacklight//, Holt (New York,NY), 1984.
 * //Baptism of Desire//, Harper (New York,NY), 1989.
 * //Original Fire: New and Selected Poems//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2003.

For Children

 * //The Leap// 1990
 * //Grandmother's Pigeon,// Hyperion Books (1996)
 * //The Birchbark House//, Hyperion Books (New York, NY), 1999
 * //The Range Eternal,// 2002
 * //The Game of Silence,// HarperCollins 2005
 * //The Porcupine Year,// 2008
 * //The Game of Silence//, HarperCollins (New York,NY), 2004.

Other

 * //Imagination// (textbook), C. E. Merrill (New York,NY), 1980.
 * //Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris Interview with Kay Bonetti//, (sound recording), American Audio Prose Library, 1986.
 * (Author of preface) Michael Dorris, //The Broken Cord: A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome//, Harper (New York,NY), 1989.
 * (Author of preface) Desmond Hogan, //A Link with the River//, Farrar, Straus (New York,NY), 1989.
 * (With Allan Richard Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin) //Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris//, University Press ofMississippi (Jackson,MS), 1994.
 * //The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner//, Penguin (New York,NY), 1994.
 * //The Blue Jay's Dance//: A Birth Year, (memoir), HarperCollins (New York,NY), 1995.
 * Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, National Geographic (Washington, DC), 2003. Author of short story, "The World's Greatest Fisherman"; contributor to anthologies, including //Norton Anthology of Poetry; Best American Short Stories of 1981-83, 1983, and 1988//; and //Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards//, 1985 and 1987. Contributor of stories, poems, essays, and book reviews to periodicals, including //New Yorker, New England Review, Chicago, American Indian Quarterly, Frontiers, Atlantic, Kenyon Review, North American Review//, //New York Times Book Review//, //Ms., Redbook// (with her sister Heidi, under the joint pseudonym Heidi Louise), and //Woman// (with Dorris, under the joint pseudonym Milou North).


 * References**

Nelson, Cary. “//About Louise Erdrich//.” [|http://www.english.illinois.edu]. Modern American Poetry, n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

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