Louise Erdrich.

• Author: Rolo, Mark Anthony
• Position: The Progressive Interview - Interview

Louise Erdrich once mused that Native American literature is often about coming home, returning to the land, the language and love of ancient traditions--a theme opposite of Western literature, which is about embarking on a journey, finding adventures beyond one's beginnings. Now, the critically acclaimed Erdrich has come home to the land of her American Indian heritage.

Though she was raised on the rich plains of North Dakota, Erdrich, the eldest of seven children born to parents of German and Ojibwe Indian descent, spent. much of her adult life on the East Coast. Far from her mother's birthplace on the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe reservation, far from the Catholic school she attended in Wahpeton, North Dakota, she found a place at Johns Hopkins University and Dartmouth College, where her writing brought her immense success.

Her first novel, Love Medicine (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1984), became a literary headline. This story about generations of Ojibwe families had a very modest press run when first published. But it won the National Book Critics Circle Award and found a worldwide audience. In the decade that followed, titles such as The Beet Queen (Henry Holt, 1986), The Bingo Palace (Harper Flamingo, 1998), and Tracks (Perennial Library, 1989), her personal favorite, would earn Erdrich devoted fans and the admiration of critics, who laud her poetic prose and gift for weaving time and place.

Her latest novel, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (HarperCollins, 2001), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Erdrich says that for her, this story about a woman posing as a priest in an Indian community fell short of her expectations.

Today, her home is a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood. Living close to her family and to a vibrant urban American Indian community is where she has longed to be for years. These days she finds herself reflecting on the journey that brought her here. She has survived those early days of intense public appeal, including being named one of People magazine's most beautiful people. But she was never comfortable with the media's zeal to transform her into something more than a woman from a modest midwestern small town who loved words. A walk through the woods, she says, has always given her more pleasure than a cross-country book tour.

Erdrich has also survived some much-publicized personal strife. In 1997 her husband, writer Michael Dorris, committed suicide in the midst of messy divorce proceedings. Erdrich has found peace and a new path that includes overseeing a little bookstore, Birchbark Books, and being a mother again.

It is a balmy, unseasonably warm February afternoon in Minneapolis. Erdrich is in her bookstore purchasing jewelry from an Indian artisan. Afterward, Erdrich pushes a stroller as we walk through the snowless streets to her home. We visit in her dining room, which has been turned into a nursery of toddler toys and picture books. "As you can see, we have a lot of dinner parties," Erdrich teases while watching her daughter scamper around the room.

She is gracious and accommodating during the interview--not as uncomfortable and guarded as she has been with reporters in the past. Her voice is filled with laughter throughout our conversation, much of it carrying a hint of self-deprecation, which is the cultural cornerstone of Indian humor.

Erdrich is most engaged when the subject turns to the Ojibwe language. She is deeply involved in learning the language and finding out more about her Ojibwe roots. American Indian languages are in danger of becoming extinct. Reclaiming the Ojibwe language for herself and her daughter (she has replaced words in her child's picture books...