Pulitzer Prize: 2021 Winners List". The New York Times. June 11, 2021. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved June 14, 2021.

I am an ugly woman. Not the kind of ugly the guys write or make movies about, where suddenly I have a blast of blinding instructional beauty. I am not about teachable moments. Nor am I beautiful on the inside. I enjoy lying, for instance, and I am good at selling people useless things for prices they can’t afford. Of course, now that I am rehabilitated, I only sell words. Collection of words between cardboard covers”. The plot threads are numerous and so varied they shouldn’t work together but somehow they do, which makes this such an interesting and absorbing book. Except for one element. Her heritage from both parents is influential in her life and prominent in her work. [44] Although many of Erdrich's works explore her Native American heritage, her novel The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003) featured the European, specifically German, side of her ancestry. The novel includes stories of a World War I veteran of the German Army and is set in a small North Dakota town. [45] The novel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Not many authors could include all the things Erdrich does in this novel and make it work. A haunting, a bookstore, COVID, motherhood, George Floyd’s death and the ensuing protests, marriage, quarantine, and more.”

BookBrowse Review

The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events.

Susan Castillo "Postmodernism, Native American Literature, and the Real: The Silko-Erdrich Controversy" in Notes from the Periphery: Marginality in North American Literature and Culture New York: Peter Lang, 1995. 179–190. At first the ghost of Flora, an elderly customer who dropped dead, haunts only Tookie, the narrator, a middle-aged Native American working in a Minneapolis bookstore that specializes in works about Indigenous people. In life, Flora was a pest who with annoying self-righteousness never stopped wanting to be a Native American. Tookie remembers “how once she had told me I couldn’t talk about being ‘Indian’ or ‘Aboriginal,’ but should always say ‘Indigenous.’ I’d told her that I’d call myself whatever I wanted and to get the hell out of my face.” Five days after Flora died, she was still coming to the bookstore. I’m still not strictly rational. How could I be? I sell books. Even so, I found the truth of this hard to accept.”

In the early years of their marriage, Erdrich and Michael Dorris often collaborated on their work, saying they plotted the books together, "talk about them before any writing is done, and then we share almost every day, whatever it is we've written" but "the person whose name is on the books is the one who's done most of the primary writing. [15]" They got started with "domestic, romantic stuff" published under the shared pen name of "Milou North" (Michael + Louise + where they live). [11]

Erdrich makes a cameo in this book! She’s the owner of the store where Tookie works, which bears a striking resemblance to Erdrich’s real-life bookstore, Birchbark Books. How does her appearance here strike you?Start with the synopsis below, does it begin to describe the complexity of the novel? Then use our discussion questions for The Sentence, along with some thought-provoking review snippets to get the conversation started. Gates, Jr., Professor Henry Louis (Host) (2010). "Louise Erdrich". Faces of America. PBS. {{ cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Reread with my book club and have changed my rating to a 4* based on Ms. Erdrich's wonderful writing. It was a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me -- now that the nightmare that is/was Covid isn't as intense, I was able to appreciate the book more