Point Books During Tracks (Love Medicine)
Original Title: | Tracks |
ISBN: | 0060972459 (ISBN13: 9780060972455) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | Love Medicine |
Setting: | North Dakota(United States) |
Louise Erdrich
Paperback | Pages: 226 pages Rating: 3.94 | 10700 Users | 606 Reviews
List Appertaining To Books Tracks (Love Medicine)
Title | : | Tracks (Love Medicine) |
Author | : | Louise Erdrich |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 226 pages |
Published | : | August 7th 1989 by Harper Perennial (first published 1988) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Magical Realism. Academic. School |
Representaion Conducive To Books Tracks (Love Medicine)
A tribe of chicken-scratch that can be scattered by a wind, diminished to ashes by one struck match.You wouldn't make a Disney movie out of genocide, would you? Then why does Pocahontas exist? I was only recently led to this argument by the Internet, and it is yet another of many that I wished I had come across much, much, much earlier. This book has the whole 'magical realism' thing going on, like so many other pieces of work not written by white people, who have their fantasy, their postmodernism, their everything but. It is an overarching commentary on the laughable quality of superstition, myth, anything not adhering to the straight and narrow of physics, biology, science at large, but manages to never beg the question of institutional bias. We spend our lifetimes evaluating ourselves with pieces of paper, and scoff at those who cannot comprehend the simple art of bureaucracy.
New devils require new gods.It is a matter of my childhood having been steeped in so much horseshit without a single living being to attest to the contrary. Girl Scout like Indian Maidens of my elementary years, dreamcatchers bought in dollar stores, a Wendigo as a particular stirring episode in a horror-themed television show without a hint of the word Algonquian, or Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Cree, Naskapi, Innu. Compromised as these words are by colonial tongue, you cannot grasp the privileged ignorance of indoctrination without the language that inherently exposes the lie; you cannot break your belief without reasoning why.
"You must think of their unyielding surfaces as helpful," he offered. "God sometimes enters the soul through the humblest parts of our anatomies, if they are sensitized to suffering." "A god who enters through the rear door," I countered, "is no better than a thief."A piece of paper declares, if you stray here and attempt to live, we have the right to kill you. A piece of paper insinuates, if your biology proves incompatible with our lifestyles, we are not required to heal you. A forest falls from ocean to ocean to provide for many pieces of paper, birthed by colonial mindset, maintained by conqueror's brainwashing, proven by death and destruction, famine and rape, rotting of the bone and rat race of the mind. To fight is to become a monster by strength of belief, to survive is to self-efface by poison of thought, to suffer is a given. If that is not magic, I don't know what is.
They were moving. It was as old Nanapush had said when we sat around the stove. As a young man, he had guided a buffalo expedition for whites. He said the animals understood what was happening, how they were dwindling. He said that when the smoke cleared and the hulks lay scattered everywhere, a day's worth of shooting for only the tongues and hides, the beasts that survived grew strange and unusual. They lost their minds. They bucked, screamed and stamped, tossed the carcasses and grazed on flesh. They tried their best to cripple one another, to fall or die. They tried suicide. They tried to do away with their young. They knew they were going, saw their end. He said while the whites all slept through the terrible night he kept watch, that the groaning never stopped, that the plains below him was alive, a sea turned against itself, and when the thunder came, then and only then, did the madness cease. He saw their spirits slip between the lightning sheets. I saw the same. I saw the people I had wrapped, the influenza and consumption dead whose hands I had folded. They traveled, lame and bent, with chests darkened from the blood they coughed out of their lungs, filing forward and gathering, taking a different road. A new road. I saw them dragging one another in slings and litters. I saw their unborn children hanging limp or strapped to their backs, or pushed along in front hoping to get the best place when the great shining doors, beaten of air and gold, swung open on soundless oiled fretwork to admit them all. Christ was there, of course, dressed in glowing white. "What shall I do now?" I asked. "I've brought You so many souls!" And He said to me, gently: "Fetch more."To live.
Rating Appertaining To Books Tracks (Love Medicine)
Ratings: 3.94 From 10700 Users | 606 ReviewsCommentary Appertaining To Books Tracks (Love Medicine)
A great read - moving, evocative, really takes you into the hearts and minds of the Native American loss of culture, land, traditions and how it affected individuals on a personal, as well as community, level. In this, reminded me very much of Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce, esp. in its tracing of the path of divisions within native communities and the outcomes of their brutalization in addictions, madness, suicide and violence. Overlaid here, though, is Erdrich's unique and thrilling useBecause I loved reading William Faulkner in college, when I discovered in Louise Erdrich a similar depth of voice, honest characters and a consistent imaginative setting, I fell in love with her writing, too. (In the interest of disclosing bias, I grew up in the farming town of Valley Center near several Indian reservations. The relationship of Argus to Matchimanito is close to what its like around Palomar Mountain, but that's another story.) Tracks tells the history of Benign Neglect through
I read TRACKS by Louise Erdrich as part of the group read hosted by @thunderbirdwomanreads and @erins_library. I loved the alternating perspectives that this narrative is told from, and think both Nanapush and Pauline are incredibly well-developed characters. The nuances between their experiences and the way these are written (both in terms of their viewpoints and who they are telling their story to) draws out the complexity of the myriad issues Erdrich builds into the plot. I also found their
We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. So begins Louise Erdrichs Tracks, a novel which charts the lives of a native people over ten years as the boundaries of personal and physical territory slowly erode. Erdrich is a literary mystic. Tracks is told through alternating narrators: first by Nanapush, an older, charming character who recounts the deterioration of his people and land, and by Pauline, an orphan who slowly descends into religious fanaticism and
We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. So begins Louise Erdrichs Tracks, a novel which charts the lives of a native people over ten years as the boundaries of personal and physical territory slowly erode. Erdrich is a literary mystic. Tracks is told through alternating narrators: first by Nanapush, an older, charming character who recounts the deterioration of his people and land, and by Pauline, an orphan who slowly descends into religious fanaticism and
I haven't known how to review this book. I finished it nearly a week ago, and every morning I come to my computer and try to write something up. Nothing which bears any fruit comes out.It is an incredibly good book. I've had books by Louise Erdrich on my shelf for many years now. I think the first one was Four Souls. I picked it up at my alma mater, at a book sale, brand new. Soft-covers only 1.99, if my memory serves me well. Over the years, as my collection of unread books expanded so did the
I am on an enjoyable journey to read all of Louise Erdrich's novels. Tracks is my third novel of hers and the first in the Love Medicine read-along in which many from bookstagram are participating (thanks Erin and Dani for organizing!). This book exemplifies Erdrich's writing: PERFECT paragraphs, multi-dimensional characters, a rich setting in an Ojibwe community, a compassionate and honest portrayal of historical wrongs, but more importantly, an account of the personal triumphs in the face of
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