The Painted Drum
“Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see—to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves—and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.”— Washington Post Book World From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich's breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years. While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined. Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.
The Painted Drum
Discovering a cache of valuable Native American artifacts while appraising an estate in New Hampshire, Faye Travers investigates the history of a ceremonial drum, which possesses spiritual powers and changes the lives of people who encounter it.
A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich
"A revised and expanded, comprehensive guide to the novels of Native American author Louise Erdrich from Love Medicine to The Painted Drum. Includes chronologies, genealogical charts, complete dictionary of characters, map and geographical details about settings, and a glossary of all the Ojibwe words and phrases used in the novels"--Provided by publisher.
Understanding Louise Erdrich
In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich’s oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award–winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children’s literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry. Kurup elucidates Erdrich’s historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich’s writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich’s writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.
Ideology and Rhetoric
The discovery of America and its further development into a modern state and a nation are the clear instance of how ideology and rhetoric are entwined and how they can encompass widely disparate viewpoints. The essays collected in this book address the topical issues of modern American Studies: cultural difference and otherness; gender, race and ethnicity; class and power. They represent new texts and contexts, approached through the revision, reevaluation, and reconfiguration of cannons, thus accommodating the expectations of the heterodox audience. Femininity reconsidered; an ideology of passing away in contemporary world of technical development; race captured within the framework of identity and gender; the rhetoric of blackness approached through racial exploitation; American conquest ideology revealed in a mission of Manifest Destiny; the 20th century assimilation rhetoric in the relations between Native Americans and the US federal government; the conservative ideology and apologetic rhetoric of the Antebellum South; the critique of the 21st century American legal system; the evolution of the presidential rhetoric which today addresses a large heterogeneous audience – all these topics impose a transnational interpretation of American culture which developed as a result of the cross-cultural transformation of European culture/cultures, moulded on American soil to finally become a unique reformulation of the very idea of America itself.
