LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Poetry Presentation, fall 2007

Thursday, 18 October: Love Medicine (complete)

Poetry: Louise Erdrich, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Kathleen Anderson

(combined with discussion of Love Medicine)

Love Medicine discussion:  Kathleen Walker-Anderson

“At times the whole sky was ringed in shooting points and puckers of light gathering and falling...All of a piece.  As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across it.” P 37

POINT OF VIEW

1. 3^rd person:  @ June (1981)

·        part 2: 1^st person, Albertine

2. 1^st person:  Marie (1934)
3. 1^st person:  Nector (1934)
4. 1^st person:  Lulu (*No date)  mention of Fleur, face made by Manitous
5. 1^st person:  Marie (1948)  @ June as a girl, child of Manitous

·        part 2:  1^st person, Marie, Fleur helps Marie w/ difficult labor

6. 3^rd person:  @ Lulu, Henry, Beverly (1957)
7. 1^st person:  Nector (1957)
8. 1^st person:  Marie (1957)
9. 3^rd person:  @ Albertine and Henry Jr (1973)
10. 1^st person:  Lyman Lamartine (1974)
11. 1^st person:  Albertine Johnson (1980) –first clue to June and Gerry’s affair
12. 3^rd person:  @ Gordie (1981)
13. 1^st person:  Lipsha Morrissey (1982)
14. 3^rd person:  @ Marie, Gordie & June “Resurrection”
15. 1^st person:  Lulu Lamartine (1983)
16. 1^st person:  Lyman Lamartine (1983)
17. 3^rd person:  @ Lyman
18. Part 1:  3^rd person, @ Howard (1985)

      Parts 2 & 3:  1^st person, Lipsha Morrissey @ June

Objectives:

• Assimilation/Resistance

• Loss and survival
• Acculturation
• Syncretism
• Resurrection Myth

Using these objectives as a reference to analyze Erdrich’s style.

Chapter 1:  “The World’s Greatest Fisherman”

June is the “key” to the story.  The book begins and ends with June.

P. 3 “He could be different”

• In the first chapter we are given a sense of a cycle of destruction that comes full circle, yet changes, by the end of the novel:  first part of ch. 1 is told through an objective perspective, then the subjective perspective of Albertine begins to drop clues that become clear in the last chapter.

For Example:

P 9:  We find out June ran off and left her son King....Why?  What appears at first to be just the actions of a fractured person is much more complex.  Take into account Lulu’s statement about her affair with Moses Pillager (Ch 4) on p 74, “I didn’t mean to upset so many people.”

Why does she say this?  What was it about the affair that had consequences for “so many people”?

P 356:  “...the intersection points of our lives...”

• The answer to why she ran off is slowly built up throughout the book and culminates at this moment.

How are these “intersection points” formed?  Considering the complex genealogy and mixed points of view, are these post-modern substitutes for Romanticism? 

P 23  “Because it was new, I had thought”  Language gives sense that she knows different now....Why?

P 356  “Let’s play for the Firebird you bought with June’s insurance.”

P 367  “So there was nothing to do but cross the water and bring her home.”

The story forms a circle...gives a sense of hope and continuity versus destruction and loss.

Is it Loss and survival?  Or is it more? 

p 187:  Communion image associated with Henry Jr.

Ch 1:  Egg image associated with June

Both are part of Christian Resurrection Myth.

Erdrich uses Catholicism, but is this syncretism?  Or is it resistance, taking into account the end of the novel, “bring her home” to the reservation and the Firebird as a symbol of rebirth?

Ch. 12 & 14 How does Gordie’s breakdown compare to June’s?

P 6 (Ch 1)  “By now it was unclear whether she was more drunk or sober than she’d ever been in her life.”

Is this statement applicable to Gordie, also?

P 222 “He was cracking, giving way.” (the shell/egg image from ch 1)

Alcohol is a result of acculturation.  How does this complicate the “downfall” of both June and Gordie?

Chapter 13

Lipsha’s Love Medicine

P 70 Lulu to Nanapush:  “What’s your love medicine?”  Answer: he doesn’t go by white time.

Lipsha has the touch, he’s a Nanapush Man, but he does not trust it at this point.

Why?

Separation and isolation of the Chippewas into what Lulu refers to in chapter 16, p 308 as “clans and families.”  If tribal identity and oral tradition remained intact, Lipsha’s use of his touch may have turned out different had he already known he was a Nanapush Man.  It is also true of many other characters, that the loss of the Chippewa tribe and the separation of perspectives caused them much pain.

Poem:  Louise Erdrich’s “Indian Boarding School:  The Runaways”

Brief Biography:  “Erdrich, the oldest of seven children, was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on June 7, 1954. The daughter of French Ojibwe mother and German American father, Louise Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Erdrich's large extended family lived nearby, affecting her writing life from an early age.”

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/erdrich_louise.html

BIA document on Turtle Mountain Reservation:  Could this be considered Romanticizing?

http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/govdocs/text/chippewa.html

Objective 4: To register the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance—i. e., do you fight or join the culture that oppressed you? What balance do minorities strike between economic benefits and personal or cultural sacrifices?

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to become American, the Indians were once “the Americans” but lost most of their land along with many of their people. Yet Native Americans defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

Analysis of Poem

The poem addresses the concepts of assimilation and resistance, and loss and survival.  Assimilation in the case of boarding schools was ‘involuntary’ assimilation which was often resisted by the students or ‘education’ was refused altogether.  For example, Marie hides Eli and sends Nector to school.  There is also a sense of loss and survival in the poem, just as Nector lost his wits, and Eli kept the woods in him.

“stumbling north”

p 11 As Albertine is going home, “driving north” she takes note of the Loss.

• Fields the government paid to lie fallow
• Buildings and farms
• Notice the Rez is located “at the end”
• Land allotted, turning Indians into farmers

“cold in regulation clothes”

p 68  Lulu ran from the government schools like her mother, Fleur

• “hot orange shame dress
• “furious scrubbing thinned sidewalks”
• “Punished and alone.”

P 69 “They could not cage me anymore.”

“The highway doesn’t rock, it only hums...”

p 185 Lyman and Henry Jr’s road trip

• Indian profiles on highway signs

“Our brushes cut the stone in watered arcs

and in the soak frail outlines shiver clear

a moment....

• Perhaps a reference to the Chippewa belief of what happens to a drowned man
• P 367 “I’d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once had covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems...but the truth is we live on dry land.”

“the spines of names and leaves”

How does this line relate to the chaos that erupts in the Tomahawk Factory?

What is happening to names in this scene?