R and I were talking about Louise Erdrich, one of my literary heroes, and her character Fleur Pillager. R raised the issue of self-exotification, a problem I had been thinking about specifically with respect to Erdrich's work ever since I finished reading Four Souls and moved on to Tracks.
N and I had talked about the voyeuristic relationship of the reader to the text, something that is not necessarily exoticist but it's certainly a trope that encourages exoticism, I think. We also talked about how the stories Erdrich relates are not living stories - they are often of the past, and thus it is easy to remove one's responsibility and relation to the text.
In any case, I feel that the intimacy of the stories penned by Erdrich are a result of her own upbringing as a writer and as a person, and I don't want her to write differently, but I have to acknowledge this trap of self-exotification...
I guess my argument though with that assessment is that Erdrich doesn't just paint a glorified picture of an Ojibwe community, but she shows the weaknesses and failures as well. My other comment would be that Erdrich's audience might actually be other Native folks, future generations, etc. and maybe she isn't worrying so much about other people. The fact remains that she is immensely popular and I bet all her books flying off the shelves aren't all being read by Native folks...
N and I had talked about the voyeuristic relationship of the reader to the text, something that is not necessarily exoticist but it's certainly a trope that encourages exoticism, I think. We also talked about how the stories Erdrich relates are not living stories - they are often of the past, and thus it is easy to remove one's responsibility and relation to the text.
In any case, I feel that the intimacy of the stories penned by Erdrich are a result of her own upbringing as a writer and as a person, and I don't want her to write differently, but I have to acknowledge this trap of self-exotification...
I guess my argument though with that assessment is that Erdrich doesn't just paint a glorified picture of an Ojibwe community, but she shows the weaknesses and failures as well. My other comment would be that Erdrich's audience might actually be other Native folks, future generations, etc. and maybe she isn't worrying so much about other people. The fact remains that she is immensely popular and I bet all her books flying off the shelves aren't all being read by Native folks...
Comments