by Louise Erdrich
This post is going to be less about the book and more about what the book stirred inside me. I have a lot of questions for all of you here.
You may have heard of this author, she wrote a book that is fairly well know to children's librarians called The Birchbark House. She is an Ojibwe Native American and sets her books in the northern plains and as far east as Michigan. This is the first adult book I have read by her and I was very moved. I bought it for my YA section, though it definitely has more adult appeal, but I am keeping it since I think it was a beautifully written piece of literature and hope that a few teens will try it out.
First of all a little summary of the book. It spans the first three quarters of the 2oth century, and even a bit of the 19th, but it is not chronological. We see into the families and lives of a group of people in North Dakota who are all connected through blood, romance, or politics. Some of the connections are almost mystical and hard to even describe. Each story is so different, yet they all shape the other stories. They are told from that person's point of view, so you hear part of a story from one, part from another, and in the end you see the circles that connect the lives of the small, dying town of Pluto, ND and the neighboring reservation.
I can't help but to be in awe of Erdrich's skill at tying these people together with the smallest of threads, yet keeping them so individual and real. Her skill alone is reason enough to read this. In fact her skill will character, plot, imagery, and symbolism makes me imagine even Sherbert (a BA High School reference for those of you who don't know) loving, and assigning, this book. Of course, had that been the case, I would have hated it eventually.
Despite all of that, however, this post is about how, when I finished the book I started thinking about how drawn I am to works about or by Native Americans. And I wonder why that is. So, I address this to all my friends out there and ask you to hang in there as I delve into the stream of consciousness flow that may ensue.
I have noticed that I do not seek out works by and about Native Americans, but when I do read them I am mesmerized. I get soaked in. I drown in the history, either stated or implied in the stories. Is this because I was raised in a town with the name Broken Arrow? Is it because for 8 years I drove a car with a license plate proclaiming Oklahoma as "Native America?" I could blame the semester of Oklahoma history that was required, but I think my fellow students, like me, knew the basics already. Were they taught us in school alone or were stories told at home? Was it so much a part of our culture that we learned these things as if within a collective consciousness?
My grandmother was born to a white man and a Cherokee woman. She never knew her mother's family though. I was told I was supposed to be half Native America myself, but upon finding my birth family learned that was not true, though a few generations back there was a Mic Mac in my family. For my fellow Oklahoman friends I will explain that the Mic Mac tribe was from what is now Maine and southern Canada.
That brings me to something else. Am I the only person who grew up forgetting, or perhaps not understanding, that there are Native Americans from every part of the United States? We learned the Trail of Tears, so we know that Five Civilized Tribes did not originate from Oklahoma, but did any out there think beyond that? I knew there were tribes in the southwest and the northern plains, but perhaps that label, the Five Civilized Tribes, made them seem diminished as 'true' Native Americans. Then I moved to Connecticut and realized, duh, that the first encounters that Europeans had with Native Americans in the colonies were in New England. In fact the first bloody battle, the one that is thought to have really set the tone, was here in Connecticut with the Pequot tribe. Did I realize that Quinnipiac, Naugatuck, and Poquonock were Native American words? Of course not. We Okies know that Tahlequah, Muskogee, Checotah, and Coweta are what Native American words look and sound like.
But here, I have digressed and wandered into irrelevant musings. What I want to know is if any of this feels familiar to the other Okies reading this? How about my Nutmegger friends? Do you feel touched at all by Native American culture or is it all Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun to you? Am I just thinking about this too much?
Your opinions and revelations please!
