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Louise Erdrich
An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Louise
Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1954. She is the oldest
of seven children; both her parents worked at a Bureau of Indian
Affairs boarding school. Erdrich’s father is German-born and her mother
is the daughter of a tribal elder of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa.
Erdrich’s mother’s Ojibwa heritage and her own experiences on the
tribal reservation near the Canadian border in North Dakota both were
central to her best-known writing, a cycle of interrelated historical
and contemporary novels often compared to the work of William Faulkner.
Erdrich attended Dartmouth College among the first class of women
admitted to the school, graduating with a B.A. in English and creative
writing in 1976. Erdrich went on to earn a master’s degree in creative
writing at Johns Hopkins. In 1984, Erdrich published both her first
volume of poetry, Jacklight,
and her first novel, Love Medicine.
She has subsequently published historical fiction, short stories,
memoirs, nonfiction, and children’s literature, all of it critically
acclaimed.
Her books for younger readers echo the same themes of all Edrich’s
writing. Her work includes two picture books -- Grandmother’s Pigeon (1996) and The Range Eternal (2002). Grandmother’s Pigeon explores the
closeness between children and their globetrotting grandmother through
magical realism; The Range Eternal
is also a tale about intergenerational bonds and tradition, here
represented by the comfort of a wood-burning stove. For middle-grade
readers, Erdrich wrote and illustrated The Birchbark House (1999) and its
continuation, The Game of Silence
(2005). The two historic novels are told from the point of view of a
nineteenth-century Ojibwa girl growing up in the middle of the Great
Lakes, her people slaughtered by interloping settlers. Erdrich has
another book for young people, The
Porcupine Year, scheduled to be published by Harper Collins in
Fall 2008.
Erdrich lives in Minneapolis, where she owns Birchbark Books, an
independent bookstore.
Sources
Hafen, P. Jane. “Louise Erdrich.” Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Volume 206:
Richard H. Cracroft, ed. Detroit: Gale, 1999. pp.
85-96.
"Louise Erdrich." Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume
47. Gale Group, 2003
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington
Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005. 22 February 2008.
<http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/whm/bio/erdrich_l.htm>
“Louise Erdrich.” Current Biography Yearbook, 1989.
Related Links:
Birchbark Books. 22 February 2008. http://www.birchbarkbooks.com/
“Louise Erdrich.” Harper Collins. 22 February 2008.
<http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/2905/Louise_Erdrich/index.aspx>
McNally, Amy Leigh and Dalal, Piyali Nath. “Louise Erdrich.” Voices
from the Gap. Department of English and Programs in
American Studies at the University of Minnesota. 22 February 2008.
<http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/erdrich_louise.html>
Nelson, Cary, ed. "Louise Erdrich." Modern American Poetry Online
Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of
Modern American Poetry. New York: Oxford,
2000. 22 February 2008.
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/erdrich/erdrich.htm>.
Some of Louise Erdrich's Works:
Grandmother’s Pigeon
(1996)
Erdrich’s text for this picture book centers around passenger pigeons,
thought to be extinct, hatching in amongst a grandmother’s things
while she has gone to Greenland. Reflects Erdrich’s recurring themes of
magical realism and intergenerational knowledge.
 The Birchbark House (1999)
Erdrich also illustrated the tale of seven year old Omakayas, an Ojibwa
girl who is the sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic. Erdrich
depicts Omakayas’s 1847 daily life growing up in an extended family as
full of the cycles of nature and mysticism.
 The Range Eternal (2002)
The narrator shares memories of the ever-burning wood stove in her
childhood home in the mountains of North Dakota. Erdrich’s text hints
at the larger themes of the loss of tradition and comfort in the face
of modernization underpinning this picture book.
 The Game of Silence (2005)
Erdrich won the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction for this
novel, which continues the story of Omakayas. When their home on an
island in Lake Superior and way of life are threatened, her people are
forced West.
Forthcoming:
The Porcupine Year (New
York: Harper Collins, September 2008)
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