Title: You cannot assimilate Indian ghosts' : a magical realist reading of Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2021, vol. 47, iss. 2, pp. 31-43
Extent
31-43
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2021-2-3
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/144874
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In The Night Watchman (2020), Louise Erdrich continues to blur the lines between history and fiction as she has done in several of her novels. Erdrich introduces the reader to several magical elements that appear to be entirely real: two ghosts, a dog that talks, and an unearthly powwow with Jesus as one of the dancers. The main objective of this article is to show how Erdrich's adoption of a magical realist narrative mode grants her the authority to challenge "the orthodox version of history" (Holgate 2015: 635) and to "re-envision" Native American history from the perspective of "the dispossessed, the silenced, and the marginalized" (Slemon 1995: 422). In particular, this article investigates the characterization and function of one of the two ghosts that appear in the novel in the context of two significant eras in the history of Native Americans: off-reservation boarding schools and the termination policy of the 1950s.
References
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[2] Aldea, Eva (2011) Magical Realism and Deleuze: The Indiscernibility of Difference in Postcolonial Literature. London: Continuum.
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[17] Holgate, Ben (2015) Unsettling narratives: re-evaluating magical realism as postcolonial discourse through Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and The Swan Book. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 51 (6), 634–647. | DOI 10.1080/17449855.2015.1105856
[18] Justice, Daniel Heath (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
[19] Katanski, Amelia (2005) Learning to Write Indian: The Boarding-School Experience and American Indian Literature. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
[20] McCollum, Sean (2011) Introduction. In: Luebering, J. E. (ed.) Native American History. New York: Rosen Educational Services, 11–15.
[21] Perez, Richard and Victoria A. Chevalier (2020) Introduction: Proliferations of being: the persistence of magical realism in twenty-first century literature and culture. In: Perez, Richard and Victoria A. Chevalier (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-first Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–19.
[22] Porter, Joy (2005) Historical and cultural contexts to Native American literature. In: Porter, Joy and Kenneth M. Roemer (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 37–68.
[23] Sasser, Kim Anderson (2014) Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism: Strategizing Belonging. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[24] Slemon, Stephen (1995) Magic realism as post-colonial discourse. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 407–426.
[25] Stirrup, David (2010) Louise Erdrich. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
[26] Stripes, James D. (1991) The problem(s) of (Anishinaabe) history in the fiction of Louise Erdrich: voices and contexts. Wicazo Sa Review 7 (2), 26–33. | DOI 10.2307/1409060
[27] Warnes, Christopher (2009) Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[28] Wilson, Rawdon (1995) The metamorphoses of fictional space: magical realism. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 209–233.
[29] Zamora, Lois Parkinson (1995) Magical romance/Magical realism: ghosts in U.S. and Latin American fiction. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 497–550.
[2] Aldea, Eva (2011) Magical Realism and Deleuze: The Indiscernibility of Difference in Postcolonial Literature. London: Continuum.
[3] Beidler, Peter G. and Gay Barton (1999) A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
[4] Boehmer, Elleke (2005) Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[5] Bowers, Maggie Ann (2004) Magic(al) Realism. London: Routledge.
[6] Brogan, Kathleen (1996) Haunted by history: Louise Erdrich's Tracks. Prospects (21), 169–192. | DOI 10.1017/S0361233300006529
[7] Calloway, Colin G. (2006) First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.
[8] Coleman, Michael C. (1993) American Indian Children at School (1850–1930). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
[9] Coulombe, Joseph L. (2011) Reading Native American Literature. London: Routledge.
[10] Edkins, Jenny (2006) Remembering relationality: trauma time and politics. In: Bell, Duncan (ed.) Memory, Trauma, and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present. New York: Palgrave, 99–115.
[11] Erdrich, Louise (2020) The Night Watchman. Harper. Kindle edition.
[12] Faris, Wendy B. (1995) Scheherazade's children: magical realism and postmodern fiction. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 163–190.
[13] Fixico, Donald (2002) Federal and state policies and American Indians. In: Deloria, Philip J. and Neal Salisbury (eds.) A Companion to American Indian History. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 379–396.
[14] Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (2010) Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts. New York: New York University Press.
[15] Harrison-Buck, Eleanor and Julia A. Hendon (2018) An introduction to relational personhood and other-than-human agency in archaeology. In: Harrison-Buck, Eleanor and Julia A. Hendon (eds.) Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology. Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 3–28.
[16] Henn, David (2005) History and the fantastic in José Saramago's fiction. In: Hart, Stephen M. and Wen-chin Ouyang (eds.) A Companion to Magical Realism. Woodbridge: Tamesis Books, 103–113.
[17] Holgate, Ben (2015) Unsettling narratives: re-evaluating magical realism as postcolonial discourse through Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and The Swan Book. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 51 (6), 634–647. | DOI 10.1080/17449855.2015.1105856
[18] Justice, Daniel Heath (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
[19] Katanski, Amelia (2005) Learning to Write Indian: The Boarding-School Experience and American Indian Literature. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
[20] McCollum, Sean (2011) Introduction. In: Luebering, J. E. (ed.) Native American History. New York: Rosen Educational Services, 11–15.
[21] Perez, Richard and Victoria A. Chevalier (2020) Introduction: Proliferations of being: the persistence of magical realism in twenty-first century literature and culture. In: Perez, Richard and Victoria A. Chevalier (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-first Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–19.
[22] Porter, Joy (2005) Historical and cultural contexts to Native American literature. In: Porter, Joy and Kenneth M. Roemer (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 37–68.
[23] Sasser, Kim Anderson (2014) Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism: Strategizing Belonging. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[24] Slemon, Stephen (1995) Magic realism as post-colonial discourse. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 407–426.
[25] Stirrup, David (2010) Louise Erdrich. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
[26] Stripes, James D. (1991) The problem(s) of (Anishinaabe) history in the fiction of Louise Erdrich: voices and contexts. Wicazo Sa Review 7 (2), 26–33. | DOI 10.2307/1409060
[27] Warnes, Christopher (2009) Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[28] Wilson, Rawdon (1995) The metamorphoses of fictional space: magical realism. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 209–233.
[29] Zamora, Lois Parkinson (1995) Magical romance/Magical realism: ghosts in U.S. and Latin American fiction. In: Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (eds.) Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 497–550.