20 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Sees Love Medicine as “overcoming Otherness” through its bicultural blendings,
offering different but mutually beneficial readings for Native and non-Native
readers.
Karla Sanders, “A Healthy Balance: Religion, Identity, and Community in Louise
Erdrich’s Love Medicine,” MELUS, 23, 2 (1998): 129–155.
Traces cultural blendings and forms of power.
Kristan Sarvé-Gorham, Bucknell Review, 39, 1 (1995): 167–190.
Argues that Tracks, set earlier in time than Love Medicine, establishes two lines
of power in the characters of Fleur and Pauline and that those lines and their
much different motivations and goals can be traced into their descendants in
Love Medicine.
Lissa Schneider, “Love Medicine: A Metaphor for Forgiveness,” SAIL: Studies in
American Indian Literatures, 4 (Spring 1992): 1–13.
Focuses on storytelling as act and as form in the novel, arguing that stories help
lead to forgiveness and thus the novel becomes a kind of healing or “love medi-
cine” itself.
Lydia A. Schultz, “Fragments and Ojibwe Stories: Narrative Strategies in Louise
Erdrich’s Love Medicine,” College Literature, 18 (October 1991): 80–95.
Discusses multi-perspectivity in Love Medicine, considering its lineage from
Modernism but ultimately deciding that rather than signaling the fragmentation
typical there, it constructs a sense of community.
Mark Shackleton, “‘June Walked over It Like Water and Came Home’: Cross-
Cultural Symbolism in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Tracks,” in Trans-
atlantic Voices: Interpretations of Native North American Literatures, edited by
Elvira Pulitano (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), pp. 188–205.
Argues that readers must pay attention to bicultural codes—for instance, to Native
spiritual beliefs and Catholicism—to appreciate the complexity of Erdrich’s work;
includes analysis of the water imagery in Love Medicine.
John S. Slack, “The Comic Savior: The Dominance of the Trickster in Louise
Erdrich’s Love Medicine,” North Dakota Quarterly, 61, 3 (1993): 118–129.
Argues for seeing the trickster in various manifestations as occupying a crucial role
in Love Medicine and for an ultimately comic and thus redemptive tone; also takes
up the question of whether to see the work as a short-story cycle or as a novel.
Karah Stokes, “What about the Sweetheart?: The ‘Different Shape’ of Anishinabe
Two Sisters Stories in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Tales of Burning
Love,” MELUS, 24 (Summer 1999): 89–105.
Compares characters and relationships in Love Medicine to figures in traditional
Anishinaabe myths, focusing particularly on female characters.
Lorena L. Stookey, Louise Erdrich: A Critical Companion (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1999).