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Love Medicine Sparknotes

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The award winning novel Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich contains various viewpoints from Native Americans of the Chippewa tribe. Many of the stories in this book contain some sort of heartache or struggle due to an affair or some external source, but interestingly there is one relationship that is not strained in that way. Instead, it is the conflicting ideas of a mother-daughter relationship. Even though Zelda Kashpaw and her daughter Albertine Johnson at first seem to be a living dichotomy, they realize the need for each other. Zelda Kashpaw is a Chippewa and aligns herself to the traditions of her family and tribe, except for one major decision. The first time we meet Zelda in this book, she is helping prepare the pies and cleaning for …show more content…

After reading about June’s death, Albertine’s point of view is the first to be seen by the reader. She has run away from home because she could not handle being around her mother anymore and is pursuing a career in nursing. Her mother disapproves of this based on her comment “Oh my, are you going to be a career girl?”. This was said after hearing Albertine state “I’m not interested anyways” during the discussion about marriage. So, Albertine has shrugged away the notion of fulfilling the traditional role of a woman by not wanting to get married and seemingly not wanting to have children. In fact, we learn from her cousin Lipsha Morrisey, Albertine goes a step further by wanting to become a doctor because nurses tend to be women whereas doctors are usually men and being a nurse was “not good enough for …show more content…

In “A Bridge” we are witnessing the time shortly after Albertine ran away from home. While in Fargo she is “officially out of money” and does not have a plan, so she waits at the bus station. Upon seeing a Native man who appears to be a Chippewa like her, she follows him and eventually spends the night with him. Even though she was running away from the life of being a Chippewa woman, she found herself partially returning to that existence. As far as we know, the closest thing to a romantic relationship for her was with Henry Jr., a member of her own

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