Books And Islands In Ojibwe Country (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
I am a great admirer of Erdrich, so I was disappointed in this quasi-travel memoir. It read more like a series of daily notes: a little bit about the writer, a little bit about how enchanting she thinks her baby is, a little bit about her important lover, and books she reads, and books she took with her, and her marvelous house, and the death of a tree, and ancient Ojibwe rock paintings at Lake of the Woods. And so on.I was interested by learning about the rock paintings, and as always with Erdrich, learning more history of the persistent, and ongoing, devastation of the Ojibwe's cultural connection to living simply with their environment. She speaks of the Canadian government's decisionwithin the recent past (during the lifetime of Tobasonnakwut, Erdrich's baby's father)to remove the Ojibwe, who "had stabilized their lives and partly recovered from the wave of nineteenth-century invasions and diseases, from their lives in and around Lake of the Woods and raise the water levels, destroying their homes, their blueberry and cranberry and wildrice bogs, and inundating many of their sacred paintings. As a registered Ojibwe with both German and French blood, Erdrich lives in a present where through her blood runs all the past--native and invader alike. She writes with great power and imagination about all. She tells stories with refreshing unfamiliar humor partly derived from a native tradition of earthiness and humorous survival and appetite that reminds me of the Coyote stories of the natives of the southwest. For examples, see her prose folk-tales about Potchikoo in Original Fire: Selected and New Poems, and of course the beloved characters Nanapush and Margaret Kashpaw in the tales that culminate in the greatest of her novels yet, in my opinion: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No-Horse.Her imagination for stories, for characters, for incidents at once tragic and comic, romantic and lunatic, is rendered in deft languageand amazing detail: "tender new labia of phlox"; "the first leaf already, the veined tongue rigid between the thighs of the runner beans"; "two bluebirds pause on shivering wings". She brings us candid reports and an authentic music from beyond common boundaries of contemporary literature. She writes of young and old, men in and out of jail who are not vicious or depraved, men and women and their children besieged by alcoholism, by desperation. She writes of lovers who become irrationally passionate, hungry, starved for more and more of each other, of enemies who simmer their rancor over decades and generations. Her characters, poor, rich, broken, blooming, male, female, native American, EuroAmerican, all have depth and presence and purchase. None are mere figurants. She has no contempt. The only writer I know who equally plumbs depths in every character touched is Shakespeare; they both bestow attentive empathy on every character. They both find something to love and something to laugh at in the heart of all humans.I read everything by Erdrich because her stories create unimagined worlds for me, expand my sense of the depth of life in the most ordinary of us, surprise me, delight and entertain me. And teach.Even this book teaches: of John Tanner, kidnapped by the Sioux as a child and raised Ojibwe, a culture to which he returns; of Ernst Oberholzer a bibliophile who passionately loved the north of the American continent, and his home on Rainy Lake where his collection remains. Of the Ojibwe's ancient rock paintings which I long to visit now. And of W.G.Sebald's Austerlitz, a book of remembering.
I'm only on page 21 of this book and already love it. Two passages struck me so far:"Mazina'iganan is the word for books in Ojibwemowin or Anishinabemowin, and mazinapikiniganan is the word for "rock paintings." Ojibwemowin is the Algonquin language originally spoken by the Ojibwe people living throughout MI, MN, Ontario, Manitoba, and ND [and Northern WI may I add. She forgot to mention the Anishinabeg Red Cliff Reservation. That's ok. Everyone forgets about us.:] As you can see, both words begin with "mazina." It is the root for dozens of words all concerned with made images are put, mainly paper or screens...They had a root word ready to make into a verb way back when Edward Curtis and later Ernest Oberholtzer came to photograph them. Mazinaakizo. To be photographed. (Nothing about stealing souls in the word mazinaakizo. Photographers did not take Ojibwe souls, it wasn't that easy. Soul theft required the systematic hard work of inventive humiliations and abuse by the government and by Catholic nuns and priests.) p.5We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif-books in piles and on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are books waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books...They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables...I can't imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is.
What do You think about Books And Islands In Ojibwe Country (2003)?
I bought this signed copy at Louise Erdich's bookstore as a treasured gift. It was a book that my husband read before I got a chance to read it! This despite the fact I have read so many of her books, but I had not read this. It was a beautifully written journey into Northern Minnesota, a baby in tow, discovering pictured rocks, and Ojibwe history. You need to read this to appreciate all the lore that Louise Erdich brings to her writing, and the parts she shares with readers about herself. Very moving.
—Carla
I had never read anything by Louise Erdrich before, but I knew right away, from the first paragraph --My travels have become so focused on books and islands that the two have merged for me. Books, islands. Islands, books. Lake of the Woods in Ontario and Minnesota has 14,000 islands. Some of them are painted islands, the rocks bearing signs ranging from a few hundred to more than a thousand years old. So these islands, which I'm longing to read, are books in themselves...--that I had to read Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country.Some other reviewers on Goodreads (perhaps with different expectations, from having read Erdrich's novels?) were disappointed with this book; they said it was about trivial things. Well, it's a short read, if you like, and Erdrich uses an easy, chatty style, and it's about a woman going sight-seeing with her baby. It is also about, among other things:+ How to prepare physically and psychologically for going on a journey+ What books are for+ The coexistence of land and human history+ What babies are for+ The language one grows up speaking and the language one hears only in prayers and the language one strives desperately to learn as an adult+ How to return from a journeyIt is a short book and there's a lot in it, and I think when I read it again -- maybe on an island, maybe when I'm forty-eight -- I will find it just as deep and clear and satisfying.
—Dorothea
I went to Erdrich's bookstore, Birchbark Books, in Minneapolis and found this little gem. Erdrich is one of my favorite authors, the northwoods is one of my favorite places and books are one of my favorite topics so I couldn't resist. It's travel tale about one of her trips to Lake of the Woods on the Minnesota/Canadian border, her new daughter and her Ojibwe healer father and about the magical library of Ernest Oberholtzer, one of the founders of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (where I spent much of my youth), on an island on Rainy Lake. Some day I will go there.
—Mark
