Reading between Worlds Narrativity in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich

Abstract LouI serdrich in A contemporary writer of German American and Chippewa heritage. Like many literary works by Native Americans, her novels, Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), and The BinBo Palace (1994) reflect the ambivalence and tension marking the lives of people, much like herself, from dual cultural backgrounds. Erdrich’s novels feature Native Americans, mixed-bloods, and other culturally and socially displaced characters whose marginal status is simultaneously an advantage and a disadvantage, a source of both power and powerlessness.1 In Love Medicine, for example, Lipsha Morrissey, born with the shaman’s healing touch, grows up with both Native American and Roman Catholic religious beliefs. His knowledge of both religions is sometimes an advantage, but at other times he is merely paralyzed between contradictory systems of belief. In The Beet Queen, Wallace Pfef, marginalized as a homosexual in a small midwestern town, plays an ambivalent role as Karl Adare’s lover and as husband-and-father substitute to Karl’s wife and daughter. His liminal status is a source of both happiness and grief. In Tracks, Erdrich’s two narrators likewise struggle with liminality in their efforts to leave behind early lives in favor of others they have chosen.