Studies in the Literary Achievement of Louise Erdrich, Native American Writer

Studies in the Literary Achievement of Louise Erdrich, Native American Writer PDF Author: Brajesh Sawhney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This work is a collection of critical essays on the fiction and scholarship of one of Native America's most loved and respected writers. Drawing on her Chippewa and German-American heritage, Erdrich has produced a body of work whose pervasive mythical landscape and the cast of interconnected characters has been credited with bringing Native American literature to the literary mainstream and inspiring an entire generation of Native American writing. Her eleven North Dakota novels constitute a web of complex, absorbing narratives documenting familial, political and social histories over a century of tumultuous change. Erdrich's blending of Native oral and western traditions demand multilayered critical approaches. The essays relate to different issues relevant to her fiction, in particular the categorization of her work as Native American, but also questions about genre, gender, structure, narrative voice, authorship, and the ethics and politics of fiction labeled as Native American. Peter G. Beidler's essay, for example, investigates the use of medical terms as source of humor in Four Souls. Tom Matchie in his essay explores parallels between use of grotesque in Erdrich and Flannery O'Connor. Alan R. Velie examines dialectics of the Indian aesthetics and western literary forms in her fiction. Annette Van Dyke in her study of Agnes-Damien's role in The Last Report shows how the reader's perspectives change with a change in Agnes's role. Deborah L. Madsen and Barbara Hiles Mesle explore Erdrich's fiction from the perspective of trauma theory in the Native American context. Harry J. Brown's essay on the function of naming in her fiction, Holly Messitt in his comparative study of early American captivity narratives and Erdrich's fiction, David T. McNab in his study of death and dying in her fiction-all hint at the possibility of scholarship that Erdrich's fiction can spawn.

Studies in the Literary Achievement of Louise Erdrich, Native American Writer

Studies in the Literary Achievement of Louise Erdrich, Native American Writer PDF Author: Brajesh Sawhney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This work is a collection of critical essays on the fiction and scholarship of one of Native America's most loved and respected writers. Drawing on her Chippewa and German-American heritage, Erdrich has produced a body of work whose pervasive mythical landscape and the cast of interconnected characters has been credited with bringing Native American literature to the literary mainstream and inspiring an entire generation of Native American writing. Her eleven North Dakota novels constitute a web of complex, absorbing narratives documenting familial, political and social histories over a century of tumultuous change. Erdrich's blending of Native oral and western traditions demand multilayered critical approaches. The essays relate to different issues relevant to her fiction, in particular the categorization of her work as Native American, but also questions about genre, gender, structure, narrative voice, authorship, and the ethics and politics of fiction labeled as Native American. Peter G. Beidler's essay, for example, investigates the use of medical terms as source of humor in Four Souls. Tom Matchie in his essay explores parallels between use of grotesque in Erdrich and Flannery O'Connor. Alan R. Velie examines dialectics of the Indian aesthetics and western literary forms in her fiction. Annette Van Dyke in her study of Agnes-Damien's role in The Last Report shows how the reader's perspectives change with a change in Agnes's role. Deborah L. Madsen and Barbara Hiles Mesle explore Erdrich's fiction from the perspective of trauma theory in the Native American context. Harry J. Brown's essay on the function of naming in her fiction, Holly Messitt in his comparative study of early American captivity narratives and Erdrich's fiction, David T. McNab in his study of death and dying in her fiction-all hint at the possibility of scholarship that Erdrich's fiction can spawn.

The Native American Renaissance

The Native American Renaissance PDF Author: Alan R. Velie
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806151315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The outpouring of Native American literature that followed the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize–winning House Made of Dawn in 1968 continues unabated. Fiction and poetry, autobiography and discursive writing from such writers as James Welch, Gerald Vizenor, and Leslie Marmon Silko constitute what critic Kenneth Lincoln in 1983 termed the Native American Renaissance. This collection of essays takes the measure of that efflorescence. The contributors scrutinize writers from Momaday to Sherman Alexie, analyzing works by Native women, First Nations Canadian writers, postmodernists, and such theorists as Robert Warrior, Jace Weaver, and Craig Womack. Weaver’s own examination of the development of Native literary criticism since 1968 focuses on Native American literary nationalism. Alan R. Velie turns to the achievement of Momaday to examine the ways Native novelists have influenced one another. Post-renaissance and postmodern writers are discussed in company with newer writers such as Gordon Henry, Jr., and D. L. Birchfield. Critical essays discuss the poetry of Simon Ortiz, Kimberly Blaeser, Diane Glancy, Luci Tapahonso, and Ray A. Young Bear, as well as the life writings of Janet Campbell Hale, Carter Revard, and Jim Barnes. An essay on Native drama examines the work of Hanay Geiogamah, the Native American Theater Ensemble, and Spider Woman Theatre. In the volume’s concluding essay, Kenneth Lincoln reflects on the history of the Native American Renaissance up to and beyond his seminal work, and discusses Native literature’s legacy and future. The essays collected here underscore the vitality of Native American literature and the need for debate on theory and ideology.

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich PDF Author: David Stirrup
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847796621
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Louise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers. This book is the first fully comprehensive treatment of Erdrich’s writing, analysing the textual complexities and diverse contexts of her work to date. Drawing on the critical archive relating to Erdrich’s work and Native American literature, Stirrup explores the full depth and range of her authorship. Breaking Erdrich’s oeuvre into several groupings - poetry, early and late fiction, memoir and children’s writing - Stirrup develops individual readings of both the critical arguments and the texts themselves. He argues that Erdrich’s work has developed an increasing political acuity to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Native American literatures. Erdrich’s insistence on being read as an American writer is shown to be in constant and mutually-inflecting dialogue with her Ojibwe heritage. This sophisticated analysis is of use to students and readers at all levels of engagement with Erdrich’s writing.

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich PDF Author: Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441142061
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Leading scholars critically explore three leading novels by Louise Erdrich, one of the most important and popular Native American writers working today.

Understanding Louise Erdrich

Understanding Louise Erdrich PDF Author: Seema Kurup
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611176247
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich's oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children's literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry. Kurup elucidates Erdrich's historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich's writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich's writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.

Tracks on a Page

Tracks on a Page PDF Author: Frances Washburn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book details the intersections between the personal life and exceptional writing of Louise Erdrich, perhaps the most critically and economically successful American Indian author ever. Known for her engrossing explorations of Native American themes, Louise Erdrich has created award-winning novels, poetry, stories, and more for three decades. Tracks on a Page: Louise Erdrich, Her Life and Works examines Erdrich's oeuvre in light of her experiences, her gender, and her heritage as the daughter of a Chippewa mother and German-American father. The book covers Erdrich from her birth to the present, offering fresh information and perspectives based on original research. By interweaving biography and literary analysis, the author, who is herself Native American, gives readers a complete and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Erdrich's identity as a woman and an American Indian have influenced her life and her writing. Tracks on a Page is the first, book-length work to approach Erdrich and her works from a non-Euro-Western perspective. It contextualizes both life and writing through the lenses of American Indian history, politics, economics, and culture, offering readers new and intriguing ways to appreciate this outstanding author.

Native American Literature

Native American Literature PDF Author: Helen May Dennis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134153961
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Native American Literature underwent a Renaissance around 1968, and the current canon of novels written in the late twentieth century in American English by Native American or mixed-blood authors is diverse, exciting and flourishing. Despite this, very few such novels are accepted as part of the broader American literary canon. This book offers a valuable and original approach to contemporary Native American literature. Dennis’s contemplation of space and spatialized aesthetics is compelling and persuasive. Considering Native American literature within a modernist framework, and comparing it with writers such as Woolf, Stein, T.S Eliot and Proust results in a valuable and enriching context for the selected texts. Vital reading for scholars of Native American Literature, this book will also provide good grounding in the subject for those with an interest in American and twentieth century literature more generally.

The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman PDF Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062671200
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, AMAZON, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes]

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes] PDF Author: Linda De Roche
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 2067

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Book Description
This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context provides wide coverage of authors, works, genres, and movements that are emblematic of the diversity of modern America. Not only are major literary movements represented, such as the Beats, but this work also highlights the emergence and development of modern Native American literature, African American literature, and other representative groups that showcase the diversity of American letters. A rich selection of primary documents and background material provides indispensable information for student research.

Native American Writers

Native American Writers PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438134398
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Presents a collection of critical essays analyzing modern Native American writers including Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and more.