22 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
While Love Medicine provides a compelling reading experience on its
own, students will have an even richer one by reading other reservation novels.
Although published first chronologically, Love Medicine dramatizes events that
take place after much reservation land has been whittled away owing to the
Allotment Acts and unscrupulous timber companies and while the Ojibwe are
seeking ways to sustain their traditoin but also survive within the U.S. economy.
Tracks and Four Souls depict events prior to those in Love Medicine and provide
context for understanding the feuds among the reservation families. The Beet
Queen overlaps with the early years depicted in Love Medicine, while The Bingo
Palace follows it in time. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse covers
the entire twentieth century and is told primarily through the perspective of the
reservation priest.
Love Medicine follows three generations and fifty years (1934 to 1984) in
the lives of several Ojibwe families, with the primary emphasis on the Kashpaws
and the Lamartines. The eighteen chapters are mostly narrated in the first person
by various characters. The four “elements”—fire, earth, water, and air—serve as
potent sources of imagery in the reservation novels, with water taking the domi-
nant and transformative role in Love Medicine. Along with its multiplicity of nar-
rators, which allows the reader to learn of family and individual histories from
varied and sometimes conflicting sources, the novel blends humor and tragedy in
a complex swirl of events.
Love Medicine has generated a large amount of scholarship; the works cited
below are meant to provide an entry into that body of criticism, which can be
carried further by exploring articles and essays cited in their bibliographies. Note
that Erdrich’s Native characters are alternately referred to as Ojibwe, Chippewa,
and Anishinaabeg, and each of those terms is found with alternate spellings.
Ojibwe once referred to the more northern people, roughly those living in Min-
nesota and Canada, and Chippewa to those in North Dakota, but the two terms
have become increasingly interchangeable. Anishinaabeg is the name the people
traditionally used for themselves, probably meaning “spontaneous people,” and
it refers to their language. In RESOURCES, spellings of tribal names are not
regularized; in the essay above the spellings are Erdrich’s.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- A fruitful topic for exploration is the concept of home in Love Medicine. At
the end of the first section of the novel, one finds the sentence “The snow
fell deeper that Easter than it had in forty years, but June walked over it
like water and came home.” Near the end of the novel June’s son, Lipsha,
has discovered that his biological parents were June and Gerry Nanapush,
and he brings home the car June’s other son had bought with her insurance
money. Rivals Lulu Lamartine and Marie Kashpaw both make homes for
many children over the years; several scenes focus on their housekeeping.
Lulu’s extremely orderly home, which seems to contrast with her love life,
burns down. What does home mean to various characters? In what respects