Matchimanito

by Louise Erdrich

Chapters One and Three of "Tracks": Originally published together as "Matchimanito" in The Atlantic in May, 1988. In these chapters, Nanapush tells the story of the beginnings of his relationship with Fleur.

Genres: Short Stories, Literature

Unknown Binding

First published May 1, 1988

About the author

Karen Louise Erdrich is a American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). 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.

For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-e...

From a book description:

Author Biography:

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. Born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, she grew up mostly in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She worked at various jobs, such as hoeing sugar beets, farm work, waitressing, short order cooking, lifeguarding, and construction work, before becoming a writer. She attended the Johns Hopkins creative writing program and received fellowships at the McDowell Colony and the Yaddo Colony. After she was named writer-in-residence at Dartmouth, she married professor Michael Dorris and raised several children, some of them adopted. She and Michael became a picture-book husband-and-wife writing team, though they wrote only one truly collaborative novel, The Crown of Columbus (1991).

The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events.

She is the author of four previous bestselling andaward-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks; and The Bingo Palace. She also has written two collections of poetry, Jacklight, and Baptism of Desire. Her fiction has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle (1984) and The Los Angeles Times (1985), and has been translated into fourteen languages.

Several of her short stories have been selected for O. Henry awards and for inclusion in the annual Best American Short Story anthologies. The Blue Jay's Dance, a memoir of motherhood, was her first nonfiction work, and her children's book, Grandmother's Pigeon, has been published by Hyperion Press. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.

Reviews

[Ron Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very realistic short story about a Minnesota man who came across the sole survivor after " consumption" had killed the rest of her indigenous family moving from Minnesota to the Dakotas. After reading this, It makes me aware of how the American Indians suffered. This story was tough to read but has a good ending.

[Zain Hashmat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little nutty innit?? 😂😂😂😂

[Kirsty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not so sure that my rating is fair. I'm going to have to re-read this one and come back to it later. I think that I read this story at a time when I shouldn't have, which happens. Just too busy with life to really get into the meanings and influences of this story.

[Amanda]

I read this for my prose fiction class and I'm not sure how I felt about this. I was confused because it felt like I should have read Love Medicine first because the character Fleur Pillager pops up a lot in Erdrich's work. So I think my reading experience was hindered by that. Overall, I really like Erdrich's use of language and her depiction of snowy winters made me feel bone cold.