Love Medicine Louise Erdrich - Karah Stokes (essay date summer 1999)
Karah Stokes (essay date summer 1999)
SOURCE: Stokes, Karah. “What about the Sweetheart?: The ‘Different Shape’ of Anishinabe Two Sisters Stories in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Tales of Burning Love.” MELUS 24, no. 2 (summer 1999): 89-105.
[In the following essay, Stokes explores the role of Anishinabe culture, mythology, and storytelling in Love Medicine.]
Even though she grew up off-reservation speaking English, and writes a novel, a European form, Louise Erdrich's work is informed and ordered by elements of Anishinabe as well as of German-American, Catholic, and Midwestern cultures. These elements tantalize non-Anishinabe readers by lending a different shape to her fiction, a shape that they can sense but cannot fully distinguish. In order to discern the different shape of her novels, readers must educate themselves about the Anishinabe background of the works.
The meaning of Anishinabe storytelling...
[The entire page is 7755 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
