Cultural In-betweenness Of Urban Indians In Louise Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife

The 1990s witnessed the formation of a new wave of American Indian literature: it creates a more authentic picture of Modern American Indian experience and shifts its focus to urbanity and a more comprehensive, global perspective. Louise Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife belongs to this new wave of American Indian fiction and explores the in-between situation of urban Indians in a modern setting.Aided by Homi Bhabha’s theory on in-betweenness and cultural hybridity, this thesis argues that despite the negative effects of urban Indians’in-between situation, it provides them an opportunity to construct a new and hybrid American Indian culture that breaks the fixity of traditional Indian identity and enables them to better fit into modern society. Moreover, this hybrid American Indian culture is flexible and ever-changing as it evolves through the dynamic process of cultural conflict, communication and integration in the hybrid city space.Taking interracial marriage throughout American Indian history and the relocation program as points of departure, this thesis attempts to explore cultural in-betweenness in The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich. Both factors contribute to the racial hybridity of urban Indians. The above discussion prepares the ground for the exploration of the in-between situation of mixed-blood urban Indians. As a result of racial hybridity, they are under the influence of their ancestral cultural heritage and non-Indian cultural heritage, yet experience difficulty in fully merging into either of them. Nonetheless, the in-between situation of mixed-blood urban Indians becomes an advantage for them to establish a hybrid, modern American Indian culture in the city. The last section of the paper probes into the formation of a modern American Indian culture in the urban space and the dynamic cultural appropriation and integration involved in it.