Ecological Politics and Comic Redemption in Louise Erdrich’s <i>The Antelope Wife</i>

Abstract

Louise Erdrich’s 1998 novel The Antelope Wife may not strike the reader as a politicized text at first glance. The tone of the novel wavers between tragicomic and comic, and the interrelated stories that form its narrative seem to draw more attention to the personal and universal dimensions of human suffering than to its historical and political causes. Appearances aside, the narrative enacts a sharp critique of the legacy of Euroamerican conquest and the dualistic Western worldview underlying it, and I believe that Erdrich’s method of displacement and reinvention may be even more effective than a direct challenge would be. One of the most widely acclaimed Native American writers; she is Anishinaabe-Metis (Ojibway/Chipewa) on her mother’s side, German-American on her father’s, and an enrolled member of the North Dakota Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The Anishinaabe have a long tradition of oral as well as written literature in a variety of genres, including song poems, memoirs and life stories, historical and cultural accounts, and according to literary critic and writer Gerald Vizenor, ”claim more published writers than any other tribe on the [North American] continent” (qtd. in Blaeser 3). Although Erdrich has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University (1979) she credits her literary skill more to having grown up in an extended family of storytellers. Her sisters Heid and Lise are also published writers. 2 Louise’s literary production includes seven novels, beginning with Love Medicine (1984) which won a National