A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Louise Erdrich's Shawl"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Louise Erdrich's Shawl," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535827737

Book preview

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The Shawl

Louise Erdrich

2001

Introduction

Louise Erdrich's short story The Shawl first appeared in the New Yorker issue of March 5, 2001. The story then appeared in Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community (2002), edited by Heid E. Erdrich and Laura Tohe. It was later anthologized in Erdrich's The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories (2009). An often-overlooked story, The Shawl tells the heartbreaking tale of a family's generational pain and sacrifice. The narrator is a man recalling a chapter of his childhood, and the story encompasses his experience and insight, along with that of the Anishinaabe tribe, of which he is a member. Like so many of Erdrich's stories, this one features Native American characters and settings but offers universal themes such as family, heartbreak, sacrifice, and healing.

The story begins with a story shared among the local Anishinaabeg (plural form of Anishinaabe) about a broken family, a deserted husband, and the death of a child. Then Erdrich's narrative picks up with the words of a young boy, telling of his own childhood made difficult by his mother's death and an alcoholic, abusive father. Readers should be cautioned that there is an unsettling scene in which the boy faces his father in a physical fight and even feels like killing him. A profane word in the thoughts of such a young narrator demonstrates the intensity of the experience for the boy. Ultimately, Erdrich brings the story to a touching conclusion that is both wrenching and healing.

Author Biography

Karen Louise Erdrich was born on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota. She was the first of seven children born to Ralph and Rita Joanne Gourneau Erdrich, both of whom taught for Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Erdrich is three-eighths Chippewa (also called Ojibwe or Ojibwa); her father has German lineage, and her mother is French and Chippewa. Erdrich was reared in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation, where her mother's parents lived. Although they did not live there, the family visited the reservation often, giving Erdrich a strong sense of her Native American heritage. Both parents encouraged their eldest daughter's early interest in writing.

In 1972, Erdrich enrolled at Dartmouth College,