| Louise Erdrich |
Article Index for Louise |
Website Links For Louise |
Information AboutLouise Erdrich |
|
Karen Louise Erdrich (born June 7 , 1954 ) is a Native American ( Anishinaabe ) author of novels, poetry and children's books. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the '' Native American Renaissance ''. BACKGROUND AND EARLY LIFE Erdrich is the daughter of an Ojibwa mother and a German-American fatherThe eldest of seven children, she was born in Little Falls, Minnesota and grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau Of Indian Affairs school. She attended Dartmouth College in 1972-1976, gaining a BA degree and meeting her future husband, the Modoc Anthropologist and writer Michael Dorris , then director of the college’s Native American Studies program. Subsequently, Erdrich worked in a wide variety of jobs, including as a lifeguard, waitress, poetry teacher at prisons, and construction flag signaller. She also became an Editor for ''The Circle'', a newspaper produced by and for the urban Native population in Boston. Erdrich graduated with her Master Of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. EARLY LITERARY WORK In the period 1978-1982, Erdrich published many poems and short stories. It was also during this period that she began collaborating with Dorris, initially working through the mail while Dorris was working in New Zealand . The relationship progressed into a romance, and the two were married in 1981. During this time, Erdrich assembled the material that would eventually be published as the poetry collection ''Jacklight''. In 1982, a story the pair had co-written, "The World’s Greatest Fisherman", was awarded the $5,000 Nelson Algren Prize for short fiction. This convinced Erdrich and Dorris, who continued to work collaboratively for most of their careers, that they should embark on writing a novel. LOVE MEDICINE In 1984, Louise Erdrich published the novel '' Love Medicine ''. Made up of a disjointed but interconnected series of short narratives, each told from the perspective of a different character, and moving backwards and forward in time through every decade between the 1930’s and the present day, the book told the stories of several families living near each other on a North Dakota reservation. The innovative techniques of the book, which have no real precedent in Native-authored fiction, allowed Erdrich to build up a picture of a community in a way entirely suited to the reservation setting. She received immediate praise from author/critics such as N. Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor , and the book was awarded the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award . It has never subsequently been out of print (as of 2006). THE BEET QUEEN Erdrich followed Love Medicine with '' The Beet Queen '', which continued her technique of using multiple narrators, but surprised many critics by expanding the fictional reservation universe of ''Love Medicine'' to include the nearby town of Argus . Native characters are very much kept in the background in this novel, while Erdrich concentrates on the German-American community. The action of the novel takes place mostly before World War II . ''The Beet Queen'' was subject to a bitter attack from Native novelist Leslie Marmon Silko , who accused Erdrich of being more concerned with Postmodern technique than with the political struggles of Native peoples. (The controversy and fall-out from this review, and some of its underlying themes, are reviewed in Castillo, Susan P. "Postmodernism, Native American Literature and the Real: the Silko-Erdrich Controversy" in ''Notes from the Periphery: Marginality in North American Literature and Culture''. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. 179-190). OTHER NOVELS WRITTEN WITH MICHAEL DORRIS Erdrich and Dorris’ collaborations continued through the 1980’s and into the 1990’s, always occupying the same Fictional Universe . ''Tracks'' goes back to the 19th century at the very formation of the reservation and introduces the Trickster figure of Nanapush, who owes a clear debt to Nanabozho . By some way the novel of Erdrich’s most rooted in Native culture (at least until '' Four Souls ''), it shows early clashes between traditional ways and the Roman Catholic church. ''The Bingo Palace'' updates but does not resolve various conflicts from ''Love Medicine'': set in the 1980’s, it shows the effects both good and bad of a casino and a factory being set up among the reservation community. Finally, ''Tales of Burning Love'' finishes the story of Sister Leopolda, a recurring character from all the former books, and introduces a new set of white people to the reservation universe. They also produced ''The Crown of Columbus'', the only novel to which both writers put their names, and ''A Yellow Raft in Blue Water'', credited to Dorris. Both of these are set outside the Argus reservation, and neither sold particularly well. ACCUSATIONS AND DIVORCE The couple had six children, three of them adopted. Dorris had adopted three children when he was single; Erdrich also adopted them and the couple had three more children together. In 1991 , their son Reynold Abel was hit by a car and killed. In 1995 , Dorris and Erdrich unsuccessfully pursued a court case against their son Jeffrey Sava, who had accused them both of child abuse. {Link without Title} Shortly afterward, Dorris and Erdrich separated and began divorce proceedings. Erdrich claimed that Dorris had been depressed since the second year of their marriage. In 1997, Michael Dorris committed suicide. CAREER AFTER DORRIS Erdrich’s first novel after the divorce, '' The Antelope Wife '', was the first to be set outside the continuity of the previous books. However, she has subsequently returned to the reservation and nearby town, and has produced five novels since 1998 dealing with events there. These have drawn comparisons with William Faulkner ’s Yoknapatawpha stories in the way that they create multiple narratives in the same fictional area. She currently owns Birch Bark Books, a book store in Minneapolis, Minnesota , and continues to write AWARDS Erdrich is the 1987 O. Henry Award winner for her Short Story "Fleur" published in Esquire Magazine in August of 1986. Erdrich has also won the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the Western Literary Association Award, received a Guggenheim Fellowship , and several of her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories series. ''The Game of Silence'', is the winner of the 2006 '' Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction''. RELATIONS Her sister, Heidi Erdrich, is a poet. Another sister, Angie Erdrich, is a Paediatrician living on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. NOVELS AND POETRY
POETRY
EXTERNAL LINKS |