SOURCE: Silberman, Robert. “Opening the Text: Love Medicine and the Return of the Native American Women.” In Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, edited by Gerald Vizenor, pp. 101-20. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Silberman places Love Medicine within the context of late twentieth-century Native American literature, arguing that Erdrich's novel signals a break with traditional modern Native American narratives.

Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine opens with June Kashpaw, middle-aged Chippewa woman, wasting time in the oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota while waiting for a bus that will take her back to the reservation where she grew up. She allows herself to be picked up by a white man in a bar; after a short, unsatisfying (for her) bit of lovemaking in his pickup, she takes off, cutting across the snowy fields as a storm begins to hit. There...