The Chippewa Landscape of Louise Erdrich

by A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff, A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff (Contributor), Annette VanDyke (Contributor)

This volume of new essays provides the first book-length critical assessment of the fiction of America's best-known contemporary writer of Native American heritage. Louise Erdrich is arguably the most prolific and prominent contemporary writer of American Indian descent in North America today. Her novels and short stories have won great critical acclaim and are widely taught in American and world literature courses. This collection of original ssays focuses on Erdrich's writings rooted in the Chippewa experience. Premier scholars of Native American literature investigate narrative structure, signs of ethnicity, the notions of luck and chance in Erdrich's narrative cosmology, her use of hunting metaphors, her efforts to counter stereotypes of American Indian women, her use of comedy in exploring American Indians' tragic past, her intentions underlying the process of revision in Love Medicine , and other subjects. 

Including a variety of theoretical approaches, this book provides a comprehensive examination of Erdrich's work, making it more accessible to new readers and richer to those already familiar with her work.  

227 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jerry Bunin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Chippewa Landscape of Louise Erdrich is the first book in a lifetime of reading that I stopped reading twice. I rarely fail to finish a book.

I quit the first time because the three essays I read were so full of academic jargon, unexplained allusions to other books and theories, and baffling arguments that I didn’t learn anything from them and dreaded reading them each time I picked the book up.

I felt guilty and maybe arrogant criticizing people who were teaching Erdrich and were considered experts on her books and Indigenous literature in general.

So I tried again. Only one of the five more that I read interested me and seemed like it was written for people who were simply interested in her books and not trying to argue esoteric points with other academics.

That one essay was written by book editor Allan Chavkin and dealt with why Erdrich published a revised version of Love Medicine, her critically acclaimed and commercially successful first book.

Otherwise for me, I really disliked this type of writing and don’t recommend this book.

Below, I kept the original review I published. I have increased the number of stars I.m giving this book because of Chavkin's essay from one to two stars.
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I gave up reading this book short of half way through the third essay. I recommend not buying or reading it.

All three of the essays I dealt with were written by different academicians, but all seemed to have the same horribly convoluted writing style and included seemingly countless references to other books, theories and criticism without any explanation of what those theories and such said or meant.

Maybe I'm warped, but it seemed that the authors were more interested in showing off their vocabulary and how many books they had read than they were in discussing Louise Erdrich's wonderful books.

I read several of the worst sentences to my wife to see what her reactions would be. She immediately suggested that I stop reading the book. I agreed. We both majored in literature/English in college and are lifelong readers.

I also looked u[p this book on Amazon to see what other readers had to say and wasn't surprised to find that no one had written any reviews even though the book was published 26 years ago and included authors who were well versed in Indigenous female authors.

Unfortunately, the editor and the authors in this book failed at the most obvious goal of writing, keeping your readers in mind.

[NC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Very well done!