This innovative series reflects the breadth and diversity of writing over the last thirty years, and provides critical evaluations of established, emerging and critically neglected writers – mixing the canonical with the unexpected. It explores notions of the contemporary and analyses current and developing modes of representation with a focus on individual writers and their work. The series seeks to reflect both the growing body of academic research in the field, and the increasing prevalence of contemporary American and Canadian fiction on programmes of study in institutions of higher education around the world. Central to the series is a concern...

A review of Louise Erdrich’sFour Souls(2004) in theChristian Science Monitorspeaks, albeit somewhat glibly, to the centrality of her position in the general public’s reception of modern Native American issues: ‘[f]or better or for worse, most white people have two popular avenues of contact with Native Americans: casino gambling or Louise Erdrich. My money’s on Erdrich, with whom the odds of winning something of real value are essentially guaranteed’ (Charles 2004).¹ Carelessly, perhaps unconsciously, Charles rehearses one of the major controversies surrounding Erdrich’s work. He elides the stock of questions and anxieties that accompany its popularity. The...

The depth and richness of Erdrich’s canvas is in full view in her poetry, which has nevertheless suffered relative critical neglect. While analysis of the work within the wider contexts of Native American and American poetry would be timely, this chapter will attempt to address that neglect by largely foregoing a contextual analysis in favour of an investigation into several significant themes and a close analysis of a selection of representative poems. Like much Native American poetry, Erdrich’s work tends towards the personal-political, reflecting on aspects of space, place, and the individual, through such themes as Native (‘Pan-Indian’ and Ojibwe)...

Notwithstanding Womack’s distaste for symbolist readings of Native Literature (2008: 7), Erdrich is, at least partly, a symbolist.Love Medicinebegins with a scene replete with egg-related imagery. Explicit in Christian significance, the egg indicates the cycles of death and rebirth implicit in the Easter analogue of June Morrissey’s ‘transcendence’.¹ As many critics have noted, the eggs June shucks and eats while sitting in a bar; her sudden re-entry to the world when she exits ‘Andy’s’ car; her death in the winter storm; the ‘false homecoming’ of its depiction; and her centrality to the rest of the novel, as friends...

The continuous ‘North Dakota series’ was completed in 1996 and Erdrich has written seven further novels to date (includingThe Crown of Columbus(1991), co-published with Dorris), not to mention volumes of poetry, memoirs, children’s books, and other collaborative projects. This is an impressive oeuvre, and it is perhaps Erdrich’s prolificacy that has prevented scholarship from keeping pace with her production. This chapter represents an attempt to bring consideration of her adult fiction up to date with a series of ‘mini-essays’ on selected aspects of each of these later novels:The Antelope Wife(1998),The Last Report on the Miracles...

If, at this stage, a hint of unease is discernible inthiswriter’s voice, it is not least because after four chapters, we have still only accounted for two thirds of Erdrich’s output. As the title above suggests, this is somewhat of a ‘portmanteau’ chapter. As such its common themes are perhaps obliquely wrought at times, but they constitute the various ways in which Erdrich herself, and critics of Erdrich, examine the intricate symbiosis of her various ‘spheres’: writer, woman, mother, and in all roles, studentandeducator. This chapter, then, attempts to do several things. I will offer the...

As the span of this book hopefully suggests, Erdrich’s career thus far has been both distinguished and varied. The prolific nature of her output, and the variety of modes in which she writes, make a comprehensive overview of her achievement difficult and, inevitably, reductive. It is clear, to this author at least, that serious critical studies of Erdrich’s later books – particularlyMaster ButcherandThe Plague of Doves, both especially rich, dense texts – are now needed to complement the abundant archive of criticism on the earlier works. Long-term readers have witnessed the maturing of a strong voice in...