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A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine
A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine
A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine
Ebook44 pages23 minutes

A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 21, 2015
ISBN9781535827782
A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine

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    A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine - Gale

    3

    Love Medicine

    Louise Erdrich

    1983

    Introduction

    When Louise Erdrich and her husband, Michael Dorris, first sent Love Medicine to publishers, they received nothing but polite rejections. Finally, Dorris decided to promote the book himself and was successful. Holt published the book in 1983, and it became an immediate best seller. Critics applaud Erdrich's wit, tenderness, and powerful style of writing. They particularly like the manner in which Erdrich creates the Native American voice through the form of a traditional Chippewa story cycle. Her characters tell their own stories. In Love Medicine, seven characters from two families present four-teen stories about themselves and their relationships. Readers, especially Native Americans, appreciate her realistic portrayal of Native American life. The book has translations in eighteen languages and has received enthusiastic readerships through the Book-of-the-Month and Quality Paperback Book Clubs. In addition, television producers have discussed the possibilities of madefor-television serials as well as movies.

    Love Medicine has won many awards for Erdrich's ability to demonstrate the differences among individuals within the sameness of their culture. While each of the characters reveals his or her personality, the distinct ties between the characters and their culture are obvious. For example, Nector, the iconic Indian whose portrait has hung in the state capitol, leads the same personal life led by men of lesser stature. He carries on an affair, has a failed marriage, and lives out his final days in a state of near oblivion. The theme of generational connections holds strongly throughout the novel.

    Author Biography

    Erdrich was born on July 6, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota. One of seven children, Erdrich and her family later lived in Wahpeton, North Dakota, close to the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation. Her parents, Rita Joanne Gourneau Erdrich and Ralph Louis Erdrich, both taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. Erdrich's mother was born on the reservation, and Erdrich's grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, served as tribal chairman. Erdrich thinks highly of her grandfather, who keeps the old traditions alive within the context of modern culture and is respected in both cultures. While Erdrich says that none of her fiction is autobiographical, she does admit to picturing her grandfather's best traits through Nector Kashpaw in Love Medicine.

    Erdrich entered Dartmouth College in 1972. That same year, Dartmouth established its Native American Studies department. Anthropologist Michael Dorris, Erdrich's future husband, chaired the department. As a student in his classes, she began to explore her Native American heritage. She and Dorris collaborated on a children's story which was published in an Indian magazine. At the same time, one of her other teachers encouraged her poetry

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