Trauma Writing Of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine

Louise Erdrich is a Native American writer of contemporary American literature. Her masterpiece Love Medicine depicts the North Dakota family saga over half a century on a reservation. Through describing the collision between white colonial culture and traditional tribal culture in the Ojibwa tribe, the author artistically unveils the familial and personal trauma of cultural uprootedness. In the colonial discourse of forced assimilation, the Indians have lost their original cultural identity, and encountered the traumatic experience represented in cultural displacement. Thus, confronting the cultural trauma by reconstructing the cultural identity is the survival strategy for the working-through of trauma and continuance of the Ojibwa tribe.This thesis applies trauma theories and Indian cultural studies for an interpretation of trauma writing in Love Medicine. Uprootedness is claimed to be the major cultural presentation of a traumatic event in the novel. Through disclosing the cultural trauma represented in the dislocation of cultural heritage, family bonds, and religious faith, this thesis probes into the political discourse under the cultural veil, which is the forced assimilation as a means of colonization. By elaborating on the presentation and cause of cultural trauma in the novel, this thesis further investigates the cultural survival of an Indian ethnic group under the post-traumatic impact. Returning to Indian cultural tradition and the relocation of cultural identity are means to confront trauma.Chapter One discusses cultural uprootedness as a traumatic experience on the personal and communal level and makes detailed analysis on three perspectives, namely, the sense of place, the family bond, and the choice of faith. The identification with land, family, and tribal faith is the root of cultural identity. The dislocated sense of place engenders the Indians’ attachment to western industrial culture, which devastates the people and pushes them into a homeless and uprooted state. With the absence of parenthood and family abandonment, the individuals’ identities are marginalized. Confused about how to maintain the cultural and religious faiths, the tribal people have been struggling between their own indigenous culture and western culture, which causes the disruption of cultural identity.Chapter Two unveils the source of the traumatic event in the colonial discourse of forced assimilation. Through establishing institutions of authority, western discourse attempts to control the power of discourse among the Indians. In the boarding school education, the Indian languages and cultures are on the verge of extinction, which causes the displacement of cultural identity. Besides, under the impact of the Catholic Church, the Indians are converted in religion; though not having obtained the new identity, they may lose their original cultural background. Moreover, political institutes, such as the tribal council, are largely affected by the discourse of manifest destiny, which presents the assimilation of Indian identity in the colonial context.Chapter Three demonstrates that, the characters are confronted with the loss of cultural identity when referring to the Indian oral narrative tradition, tricksters’ survival humor, and Indians’ homecoming. In the oral narrative tradition, the act of storytelling crosses the cultural border, which is conducive to the formation of communal cultural memory, and serves to confront the pains of trauma. Furthermore, the Indians resort to trickster characteristics in resistance to the stereotypical cultural identification and confront cultural trauma through means of survival humor. Finally, through their homecoming, the Indians seek out the root source of their cultural identity, materialize the continuity of self-identification, and connect the personal and tribal identities. Through the tribal bond they finally reconstruct their communal identity and initially work through the trauma.Through probing into the political discourse under the phenomenon of cultural uprootedness in the novel, this thesis aims to expound the displacement of Indian cultural identity as cultural trauma to the individual and communal survival. Some of the fictional characters in the novel are lost in self-identification and have experienced unspeakable traumas. Although the Ojibwa tribe in Erdrich’s writing is still incapable of the absolute eradication of trauma, through confronting the cultural trauma and recovering their identity as a survival strategy, they can at least readdress the dilemma of cultural uprootedness and bring hope to the idea of post-traumatic cultural survival.