Love Medicine Response Paper Possibilities

You're welcome to choose your own topic for your response paper on Love Medicine, but here are some ideas to consider if you're having trouble coming up with a focus:

* In what various ways is the title Love Medicine appropriate for this novel? Be sure to discuss the entire novel, including characters, events, and themes that are not confined to the chapter "Love Medicine" (though you can discuss that chapter as well).

* How does humor function in Love Medicine? Do you feel that it adds to the novel, or detracts? Does Erdrich balance it well with poignant, squalid, and even tragic elements of the book, or not? (And, if you feel that it doesn't detract, is it possible that the humor enriches these other more serious aspects of the book, rather than merely coexisting with them?)

* Family-of-origin ties are important to various characters throughout Love Medicine. Does the novel itself seem to think blood ties are important, even when unacknowledged? (I.e. Do you see significant similarities between related characters, even when they don’t know or barely know one another? And, if so, how does this effect the various plots and themes that develop throughout the book?)

* Love Medicine is written from various perspectives as the chapters proceed, often from the first-person point-of-view of a character or from a third-person point-of-view that privileges the perspective of a single character. Rewrite a chapter that you see as particularly important from the perspective of another character. For example, what might Zelda think of the events of "Flesh and Blood," and what might her perspective reveal to us about Marie, about Nector, and/or about any of the novel's concerns? Be sure you use this creative writing exercise as a way to illustrate your understandings of the novel, in addition to creating a satisfying and believable voice and perspective for your version of the chapter.

Feel free to add your own response paper topic ideas in the comments below, if you're generous enough to share.

Welcome and a few links

Welcome to Native American and Chicano Literature! You'll find our current syllabus in the upper right hand corner of the main page of this blog, and I will also post our major assignment handouts there as they come up.

I'll be handing out a couple of articles to read and consider during class today, but if you're interested in taking another look at them or seeing them in their original web context, here are links to Ines Hernandez-Avila's essay, "To Native Americans, Naming Is Identity," and Annie-Rose Strasser's article, "Brad Paisley’s ‘White-ish’ Joke Illustrates How Uncomfortable We Are Talking About Whiteness."