Louise Erdrich Love Medicine Summary

Louise Erdrich, winner of the National Book Critics Circle is a popular contemporary American author. When first published, Louise was writing poetry, but she gained popularity from her work on the Love Medicine. Being a self-proclaimed storyteller, Louise knew that she wanted to start writing stories with more to them. Louise being of dual cultural background writes the stories not as autobiographies but with the experiences that were lived along the way. The writing which depicts the struggles in the Native American cultures particularly the relationships of both family and love within the white community. Louise’s writing on Love Medicine has earned her the spot as an American Literary Cannon.
Louise attended college at Dartmouth, at the encouragement of her mother. Louise was part of the Native American Studies

Looking to earn extra money, Michael had heard about a literary contest for the Nelson Algren Prize, and had encouraged Louise to submit a story. Louise agreed, sitting down to write a story worthy of the contest, The World’s Greatest Fisherman. Louise entered the story into the contest, earning her one of the two prizes. The story became one of the stories in what would become Love medicine. The story is about June Kashpaw, a Chippewa women who mysteriously dies the night before Easter. The story introduces many different characters from June’s family. The story bounces back and forth between characters and current and past stories. The story relates to a lot of the family issues, such as alcohol abuse and physical abuse. “Patient Abuse.” There are two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.”