future home of the living god by louise erdrich

In his class, Erdrich began the exploration of her own ancestry that would eventually inspire her poems, short stories and novels. The author’s future husband and collaborator, anthropologist Michael Dorris, was hired to chair the department. Erdrich attended Dartmouth College, part of the first class of women admitted to the college her freshman year also coincided with the establishment of the Native-American studies department. An essayist for Contemporary Novelists observed that “Erdrich’s accomplishment is that she is weaving a body of work that goes beyond portraying contemporary Native American life as descendants of a politically dominated people to explore the great universal questions-questions of identity, pattern versus randomness, and the meaning of life itself.” In addition to her numerous award-winning novels and short story collections, Erdrich has published three critically acclaimed collections of poetry, Jacklight (1984), Baptism of Desire (1989) and Original Fire: New and Selected Poems (2003).Įrdrich grew up in North Dakota, where her parents taught at a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many critics claim Erdrich has remained true to her Native ancestors’ mythic and artistic visions while writing fiction that candidly explores the cultural issues facing modern-day Native Americans and mixed heritage Americans. In an award-winning series of related novels and short stories, Erdrich has visited and re-visited the North Dakota lands where her ancestors met and mingled, representing Chippewa experience in the Anglo-American literary tradition.

As the daughter of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father, Erdrich explores Native-American themes in her works, with major characters representing both sides of her heritage. Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954.

Future home of the living god by louise erdrich