The Shawl

by Louise Erdrich

Short story published in The New Yorker in March 2001.

Genres: Short Stories, Literature

16 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2001

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

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Con la primera lectura me quedé un poco patinando, pero luego ya lo entendí un poco más.

[mencey]

pues vale no sé jdhdhsjsjs

[belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE BOOKENDS AND THEMES AND RECURRING MOTIFS! generational trauma stories really do be like that.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most powerful and beautiful stories I've ever read. I keep a copy of the original New Yorker pages, yellowing and brittle, in my songwriting binder because it touches my heart so much and inspires me. The bravery, kindness and love of the sister at the end gets me every time.

[Shannon Nicole Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and BRILLIANT! Louise Erdrich makes your soul weep and then fills it with joyful perspective . . . <3

[C.R. Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm not crying, you're crying.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story starts with what appears to be a legend: "Among the Anishinaabeg on the road where I live, it is told how a woman loved a man other than her husband." After reading about this legend, the story switches to a first person narrative: "When I was little, my own father terrified us with his drinking." The little boy grows up and confronts his drunken father by physically fighting with him. It is at this point we learn of his father's connection to the "legend." Years later, the father and son recall those events on the road from long ago, but this time the son asks his father to consider a different way that story might have played out. Very moving!

[Umer Farooq Bajwa]

I loved the story initially but the ending comments of the brother's son spoiled it for me.
Victim-blaming, should we call it?
Why should we consider that the small girl sacrificed herself instead of being thrown by some ruthless woman.

[Tiffany López · Rating 5 out of 5]

un relato único acerca de cuánto dolor puede causar la historia contada desde un único punto de vista. Además, la autora rompe con la idea del amor eterno que a menudo se relaciona con los matrimonios compuestos por Native Americans.

[Enrique Malpartida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, good, this topic moves me.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muy bonita pero no hacía falta tanta desgracia OOOOOOOOOOOOTRA VEZ

[isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for american lit - wow this story was intense (check trigger warnings always)

[Morgan Heckerd · Rating 3 out of 5]

dark on a few levels.
let it sink in.
a short story reminiscent of beloved.
dead babies & blood.
generational trauma.
indigenous.

[Maxine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disjointed and confusing writing and just boring as all hell.

[cacio e petal · Rating 4 out of 5]

godddddddddd this is so sad u have to read it it's incredible