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Louise Erdrich: Biography
Louise Erdrich was born on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota. Her father was German-American, and her mother was Chippewa. Erdrich spent her childhood living with her family in Wahpeton, North Dakota, and regularly visited family members who lived on a Native American reservation. Erdrich's parents were teachers at Wahpeton's Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, and they were both early inspirations for her writing career. They encouraged her, with her father giving her a nickel each time she wrote a story and her mother creating covers for her childhood works.
Louise Erdrich's writing would later be heavily inspired by her ancestry, including her Native American family in North Dakota. Pixabay
Adult Life and Career
In 1972, Louise Erdrich began her studies in English at Dartmouth College. There she took classes in creative writing as well as Native American Studies. During this time, she met Michael Dorris, who was working as head of the Native American Studies department. Taking his class inspired Erdrich to learn more about her own Chippewa Native American ancestry, which would become a major influence on her writing.
Erdrich was one of the first women admitted to Dartmouth College.
In 1976, Louise Erdrich graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in English. After this, she began graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she received her Master of Arts in 1979.
Erdrich was part of the first graduating class at Dartmouth College that included women. Pixabay
Louise Erdrich became an editor for the Boston Indian Council's newspaper called The Circle. Additionally, she maintained contact with the writer, teacher, and archaeologist Michael Dorris from Dartmouth College. The two began working together closely on short stories and novels, carefully planning and sharing their work as they went. Erdrich and Dorris fell in love quickly and got married in 1981. Together, they would raise three adopted children and three biological children.
In 1982, Erdrich's short story "The World's Greatest Fisherman" won the Nelson Algren Short Fiction prize. This prize had a big impact on Erdrich's life and helped to take her writing career to a new level. This short story would later become the first chapter of Erdrich's debut novel, Love Medicine (1984). Love Medicine was a huge success upon its publication, quickly receiving critical acclaim and cementing Erdrich's reputation as a highly important American novelist. Erdrich continued to explore some of the characters from Love Medicine in her next several books, The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), and Tales of Burning Love (1997).
Tragically, Erdrich's oldest son died in a car crash in 1991, and, in 1995, Erdrich and Dorris divorced. Dorris committed suicide in 1997.
In 1998, Erdrich published The Antelope Wife, her first novel to be completely separate from the world she created in Love Medicine. Erdrich had another daughter in 2001 with a Native American man whom she has not named. She has continued to publish many books since, including The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), The Night Watchman (2020), and The Sentence (2021).
Present Day
Currently, Louise Erdrich lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She runs an independent bookstore, Birchbark Books, that regularly holds events to promote and celebrate local Native American literature and sells Native American art, jewelry, and other goods. She continues to write.
In addition to owning a bookstore, Louise Erdrich also founded Wiigwaas Press with her sister. Wiigwaas Press is a small, nonprofit publisher that focuses on publishing works by indigenous authors, especially those local to the Minneapolis area.
Louise Erdrich continues to live and write in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area today. Pixabay
Louise Erdrich: Writing Style
Louise Erdrich's writing typically involves multiple characters and features narration from multiple points of view woven together. The threads of her characters' stories are often out of chronological order. Many of her works examine the cycles that occur in family life, the consequences of choices made by ancestors, and the experience of being Native American in the 21st century. Louise Erdrich's writing is considered part of both Postmodernist and Native American Renaissance literature.1
Postmodernism: a literary movement that started in the latter half of the 20th century. It commonly features techniques such as parody and dark humor, and its themes tend to be historical or political.
Native American Renaissance: a literary movement that began in the 1960s. The movement occurred because many new texts were being published by Native American authors, giving them a new voice in literature. These works often explore Native American heritage, earlier Native American texts, and traditional arts and stories of various Native American cultures.
Other examples of Native American Renaissance literature include Duane Niatum's Ascending Red Cedar Moon (1974), Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977), James Welch's Winter in the Blood (1974), Simon J. Ortiz's From Sand Creek: Rising In This Heart Which Is Our America (1981), Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Owned the Shadows (1983), and nila northSun's A snake in her mouth: poems 1974-96 (1997).
Louise Erdrich: Books
Louise Erdrich has written 18 novels. In addition, she has written short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's books. Many of her works are award-winning and have received critical praise. However, her first novel, Love Medicine, remains her most critically acclaimed work.
Novels
Louse Erdrich’s novels are:
- The Beet Queen (1986)
- Tracks (1988)
- The Crown of Columbus, which was co-written with Michael Dorris (1991)
- The Bingo Palace (1994)
- Tales of Burning Love (1996)
- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
- The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)
- Four Souls (2004)
- The Painted Drum (2005)
- The Plague of Doves (2008)
- Shadow Tag (2010)
- LaRose (2016)
- Future Home of the Living God (2017)
- The Night Watchman (2020)
- The Sentence (2021)
- The three books featured below.
Love Medicine (1984)
Published in 1984, Love Medicine was Erdrich's first novel. It explores the experiences of five families from the Ojibwe tribe living in fictitious reservations. The stories take place over several decades. Major themes of this book include mythology, land, identity, and belonging. Love Medicine won the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, among other awards.
The Antelope Wife (1998)
This novel follows two families and the ways that they interact over time. The plot does not take place in chronological order and covers multiple generations. Major themes of this work include destiny and chance.
The Round House (2012)
The Round House is about a teenage boy named Joe living on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation. Joe's mother has been violently attacked, and Joe is not convinced that investigators are doing enough to find her assailant. Joe and his friends work together to uncover the identity of the attacker. This book's major themes include tribal law vs. federal law, violence against indigenous women, and coming of age.
Short Fiction
Louise Erdrich's short fiction stories have appeared in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. These works include "Matchimanito" (1988), "Satan: Hijacker of a Plane" (1997), "Sister Godzilla" (2001), and "The Big Cat" (2014).
Additionally, Erdrich authored a short fiction collection called The Red Convertible: Collected and New Stories 1978-2008 (2009). This collection includes the stories "The Red Convertible" (1974), "Saint Marie" (1984), and "Destiny" (1985), all of which were first published in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and "The Fat Man's Race" (2008), which was first published in The New Yorker magazine.
Erdrich later revised her short stories "The Red Convertible" and "Saint Marie." They became parts of her critically acclaimed novel Love Medicine.
Nonfiction
Louise Erdrich has also written several nonfiction titles. These are Route Two (1990), which she co-authored with Michael Dorris, The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birthyear (1995), "Two Languages in Mind, But Just One in the Heart" (2000), and Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003).
Poetry
Louise Erdrich's poetry books are Jacklight (1984), Baptism of Desire (1989), Original Fire: Selected and New Poems (2003).
Children's Books
Louise Erdrich has also written several children's books. These are Grandmother's Pigeon (1996), The Range Eternal (2002), The Birchbark House (1999), The Game of Silence (2005), The Porcupine Year (2008), Chickadee (2012), and Makoons (2016).
Bark from birch trees is important in Chippewa culture and features in several of Erdrich's books, including The Birchbark House. Pixabay
Louise Erdrich: Awards
Over her writing career, author Louise Erdrich has won numerous awards for her works. In 1984, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for her first novel, Love Medicine. She received the 1999 World Fantasy Award for The Antelope Wife, the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012 for her novel The Round House, and was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2015. Most recently, in 2021, Erdrich won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Night Watchman.
She has also received the following:
- 1975 American Academy of Poets Prize
- 1980 MacDowell Fellowship
- 1983 Pushcart Prize in Poetry
- 1984 Sue Kaufman Prize for Best First Novel for Love Medicine
- 1984 Virginia McCormick Scully Literary Award for Best Book of 1984 dealing with Indians or Chicanos
- 1985 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
- 1985 Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts
- 1987 O. Henry Award, for the short story "Fleur"
- 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas
- 2005 Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota
- 2006 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, for The Game of Silence
- 2009 Honorary Doctorate from Dartmouth College
- 2009 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
- 2009 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Plague of Doves
- 2013 Rough Rider Award
- 2013 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for Chickadee
- 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize
- 2014 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
- 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Louise Erdrich: Quotes
The following quote highlights the themes of mythology and identity that are important in Love Medicine. The characters feel that their own traditional Gods can be relied upon because they are present, while they find that the Catholic God doesn't come around anymore. This illustrates the importance that the characters place on their cultural identity and mythology.
Our Gods aren’t perfect, is what I’m saying, but at least they come around. They’ll do you a favor if you ask them right. You don’t have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground." (Love Medicine, "The World’s Greatest Fisherman Part 2")
Destiny and chance are major themes in The Antelope Wife. The following quote explores these topics in light of the human body, mind, and emotions.
We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb, but that is the illusion of the healthy and the protected. Of sedate lovers. For the body has emotions it conceives and carries through without concern for anyone or anything else. Love is one of those, I guess. Going back to something very old knit into the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary." (The Antelope Wife, ch 14)
The following quote is from a story told by one of the characters in The Round House. The story is the legend of how the round house was first created, and it establishes the connection between the Ojibwe people and their land, as well as their traditions and tribal law. This sets up the theme of tribal law that is present throughout the book.
Round house: a traditional building in some indigenous cultures. The round house is often the center of a community’s ceremonies and social gatherings.
Now we are gone, but as you have once sheltered in my body, so now you understand. The round house will be my body, the poles my ribs, the fire my heart. It will be the body of your mother and must be respected the same way. As the mother is intent on her baby’s life, so your people should think of their children." (The Round House, ch 9)
Louise Erdrich - Key takeaways
Louise Erdrich is an award-winning American author.
Her works are considered important to Postmodernism as well as Native American Renaissance literature.
Louise Erdrich's most famous and critically acclaimed novel is Love Medicine (1984).
Erdrich's works often focus on cycles that occur in family life, the consequences of your ancestor's choices, and the experience of being Native American in the 21st century.
Currently, Louise Erdrich lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she owns a bookstore and continues to write.
1"Louise Erdrich." Poetry Foundation.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Louise Erdrich
What is Louise Erdrich most famous work?
Louise Erdrich's most famous work is her first novel, Love Medicine.
What is Louise Erdrich's most critically acclaimed novel?
Love Medicine is considered Louise Erdrich's most critically acclaimed novel.
Who is Louise Erdrich?
Louise Erdrich is an award-winning American author. Her work is considered important in Postmodernism as well as Native American Renaissance literature.
What inspired Louise Erdrich to write?
Louise Erdrich was encouraged by her parents to write stories from an early age. Much of her writing is inspired by her Native American culture.
Which Louise Erdrich book should I read first?
A good place to start with Louise Erdrich's books is her most critically acclaimed novel, Love Medicine (1984).
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