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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
In three pages this paper examines the influence of Chippewa flawed heroine June Kashpaw on her various family members – her niece Albertine Johnson, her husband Gordie, and her son Lipsha Morrissey – as well as to the novel as a whole, thematically representing the search for identity among Native Americans. Six sources are listed in the bibliography.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG61_TGlelovemed.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
mother and a Native American father, the concept of establishing her own cultural and individual identity was extremely important to her. As an author, Erdrich strives to present the
Native American experience in a contemporary way. According to Cherokee historian Rayna Green, Erdrichs writings "retranslate Indian thoughts and feelings into the present day" (qtd. in Van Dyke 67).
Her most famous novel, Love Medicine (originally published in 1984), is a compilation of short stories that detail the chance encounters between the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, Chippewa families
based in Williston, North Dakota. In each, the storytellers share memories and experiences that chronicle their searches for an identity that will define and sustain them. June Lazarre Morrissey
Kashpaws life and death are the thematic bookends of Love Medicine. She represents the strengths and the weaknesses of being a Native American woman. As a child, she
was strong enough to survive within nature and cheated death when she was hung by her male playmates during an all-too-realistic game of Cowboys and Indians (Erdrich 21-22). Marie
Lazarre Kashpaw, the aunt who raised her, observes of June, "It was as if she was the child of... the... Manitous, invisible ones who live in the woods" (Erdrich
87). June marries Maries son Gordie - one of her childhood tormentors - and enters, not surprisingly, into an abusive marriage. She and Gordie have a son named
King, but June also has another son with Native American activist Gerry Nanapush known as Lipsha Morrissey, who she abandons as a baby and who is also raised by Marie.
While growing up, King is the recipient of all of the positive reinforcement Lipsha is denied; like his mother, Lipsha is a family outcast, the puzzle piece that does
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