JB
Guest Jan 27, 2004
11:22 PM
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Genre Fiction: Contemporary American Indian Literature with Julie the Bolt Tips for reading Tracks: • Remember that the narrators Nanapush and Pauline alternate, and each has a different perspective/voice. • Louise Erdrich is drawing on the style of oral traditions, so the reading experience may be culturally different from other books you’ve read, intentionally so. • Erdrich can be seen as creating writing that is “decolonized” from traditional European forms. • Uses some surrealistic or “magic-realistic” imagery.
Some themes in Tracks: • Historical and cultural context of early reservation life • Disease, poverty, and the destruction of the fabric of Native American social and cultural forms • Love, spirituality, and magic • Culture clashes • Survival through humor, old traditions and subverting the “new” American cultures • Missionary activity as a way to “get rid of the Indian while saving the man” • Formation of identity in bicultural environments • The mixing of Chippewa mythology with Catholicism • Connections between destruction and survival
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