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Authors
Louise Erdrich (b. 1945) and Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)
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Erdrich’s novels are Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), Tales of Burning Love (1996), The Antelope Wife (1998), The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butcher’s Singing Club (2003), Four Souls (2004), and The Painted Drum (2005). For children she has written Grandmother’s Pigeon (1996), The Birchbark House (1999), and The Game of Silence (2005). The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year (1995) is her account of becoming a mother; Birds and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003) is a memoir. With Michael Dorris she coauthored The Crown of Columbus (1991), a novel. Her poetry collections are Jacklight (1984), Baptism of Desire (1989), and Original Fire (2003). Erdrich’s fiction is treated by Louis Owens in Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (1992), in the essays edited by Allan Chavkin in The Chippewa Landscape of Louise Erdrich (1999), and Peter G. Beidler and Gay Barton in A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich (2006).
Alexie’s novels are Reservation Blues (1995) and Indian Killer (1996). His story collections are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993, adapted as a film script for Smoke Signals in 1998), The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), and Ten Little Indians (2003). His poetry collections are The Business of Fancydancing (1992), I Would Steal Horses (1992), First Indian on the Moon (1993), Old Shirts and New Skins (1993), Seven Mourning Songs for the Cedar Flute I Have Yet to Learn to Play (1994), Water Flowing Home (1996), The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998), One Stick Song (2000), Il powwow della fine del mondo (2005), and Dangerous Astronomy (2005). He wrote and directed the movie The Business of Fancydancing (2000). Daniel Grassian provides critical analysis in Understanding Sherman Alexie (2005).
Questions for Discussion and Writing
When looked at together, these two contemporary Native American writers can show us dramatic differences in temperament and style. As a speaker, Alexie is known for his irreverence, his outbreaks of vulgarity, and his fire; in public, Erdrich maintains a reserved demeanor and a quiet wit – the sort of conduct one expects from a literary person at a lectern in the back corner of the local bookstore. Neither of them, however, writes or speaks as a pure outsider; each accepts the mingled and compromised heritage that has empowered American writers for more than a century. What is the world that each of them lives in – and how do they respond to that world?
1. Have a look at Alexie’s official web site, http://ShermanAlexie.com/, and try to get a sense of where he is located and where he is going over the course of several months. The site lists readings, media appearances, and special events, along with news of his other adventures. There are also several sites covering Louise Erdrich: have a look at them for comparison, to see how each person constructs and maintains the life of an author.
2. Both of these writers have written about Hollywood icons. What are the differences in their approaches to writing about well known characters?
3. Elsewhere in these explorations and in the Instructor’s Guide, there are speculations about gendered differences in negotiating experience – possible patterns of difference in the ways in which male authors and female authors write about the world. When you compare Alexie and Erdrich, do you see a difference that you attribute to gender? If so, where does it appear, and why?
