ABSTRACT
Louise Erdrich’s rise to prominence in Native American literary circles is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it took place in a relatively brief span of time. Her first book, a collection of poetry entitled Jacklight, was published in 1984 and was swiftly followed, in four years, by a trilogy of powerful novels: Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), and Tracks (1988). Second, her work has been critically acclaimed and widely popular, so her writings continue to garner influential critical attention while also reaching a broad, multicultural audience. Consequently, she is successful financially as well as artistically as she explores the potential of written literature to express-and perhaps to perpetuate —tribal points of view. Few Indian writers have been so fortunate.
