Musings on The Round House
Plus, an annotated bibliography of sorts
Thoughts on The Round House
By now, I have finished Louse Erdrich’s The Round House. For those of you who’ve finished, I’m curious about how you received the story— what did you think about the narrative choices, such as choosing a teenage boy to tell the story? How would the story have been different told from another character’s POV, or through an omniscient narrator, or a collective of differing POVs? What would have changed?
When I’m reading a book, I think about how the writer intentionally chose this particular way of telling the story. Some readers choose to keep the author at arm’s length when reading, but as a writer myself I am always curious about the writer’s choices. When we write fiction, our choices are truly unlimited— yet some choices work better than other choices.
For instance, I think that Joe’s voice lends the story deep resonance. As readers, we can see that he exhibits the same kind of misogyny that permeated not only the reservation but also the white world surrounding it, and the white families (and white rapist) who are also part of the narrative. We see this misogyny, yet we also see the round house itself, and the enduring tribal culture. Enduring, despite what has been taken from them by white people.
There is so much tension between these two worlds: one of whiteness, exploitation, western laws and alcohol, and the other of the cultures that existed before the tribal land was taken; before the white people came. This tension lives inside Joe as he fights to understand himself and his parents. When the book begins, Joe sees his father, the tribal judge, as a powerful man, but by the end of the book Joe learns that there can be no retribution through legal channels, and goes against his mother’s wishes.
I was also so interested in Geraldine, Joe’s mother, whose rape becomes the catalyst for so much that comes after. Yet, she is so quiet, silent, and in the background. Her silence within the story is not a narrative silence: it’s everpresent and impossible to ignore. Joe laments the absence of her home cooked meals, yet he can’t find it within himself to care for her, or to listen to what she has to say. This was incredibly poignant for me.
For me Geraldine’s quiet presence, and the ways in which she is perceived by her son and husband, was a dissonant chord in the narrative, one plucked repeatedly for the reader, should they choose to hear its message.
As I read it, Geraldine is the most important character in this book. Erdrich asks the reader: what are you choosing to see? Do we, as the readers, see Geraldine? Can we understand this dynamic that has been absorbed from the colonizing culture? That Geraldine silence is not met with understanding, but with anger? That her need for rest, for recuperation, and her hopes for some sort of peace, are ignored?
Erdrich has said that this book was inspired by the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) Database, which now includes missing and murdered Indigenous people of all genders.
Tell me in the comments what you thought of the book.
The Round House and Collected Resources (annotated bibliography)
Louise Erdrich's The Round House was published in October of 2012. Its reception was positive, and The Round House was awarded the 2012 National Book Award. Erdrich had been a finalist for the award twice before.
The novel’s story is told through in first person narrative of 13 year-old Joe, whose mother has been raped by an unknown perpetrator. Through this first person narration Erdrich explores themes of misogyny (both Joe’s and his father’s), the silencing of women (through his mother, Geraldine), the double-bind of tribal law jurisdiction and the ambivalence of external law enforcement, as well as vigilante justice, if one could call it that. Erdrich has said in multiple interviews that this book is a response to the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) database. About Joe she says:
"He has been a normal kid up until the point where he knows that it's all on him, that this question that he asks himself has to be answered: Will he have to kill someone to save his mother? ... Joe wants to see himself as wild, as ferocious, but he continually actually looks at himself and sees that he is the kind of kid who helps his dad dig roots out of the foundation of the house, or carefully puts things together. He's not as wild as he thinks he is or wishes he was somehow." (NPR)
Erdrich is considered a “second wave” writer of Native American fiction within what’s known as the Native American renaissance (a term coined by Joseph Gamber). The publication of N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn in 1968 heralded the first wave, although it can be argues that this was simply the beginning of a movement towards inclusion in American publishing, as the “waves” of authors and books are nearly indiscernible and many authors who were considered part of the first wave are still writing today. Erdrich’s first short story, “The World’s Greatest Fishermen,” was published in 1979, only eleven years after Momaday’s seminal novel. Her most recent novel, The Night Watchmen, won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
Because there is so much easily accessed information about Erdrich, I thought to create a kind of “further reading” annotated bibliography rather than simply focusing on her biography.
Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010. House Made of Dawn is a short novel (under 200 pages) that explores life on the Jemez Pueblo of New Mexico, where Momaday was raised. Many of its events are based on real-life struggles, such as alcoholism, abuse, and murder, Momaday witnessed. Its reception was lukewarm, and many (white) critics maligned the book because it didn’t adhere to traditional narrative structures. Over time the critical reception shifted, and now the book is known as a literary classic.
“We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.” -N. Scott Momaday
In “I am Not Pocahontas” (Salon, 2014) Elissa Washuta writes about her experience growing up across the country from her home reservation as a mixed-heritage Indian. She doesn’t disclose her blood quantum on principal, instead she engages with the concepts of “real” and “fake” Indian, comparing herself to Pocahontas, who was more of a “real” Indian than she is. This comparison questions white conceptions of Native Americans in popular culture. Washuta also has an excellent book of essays, called White Magic, where she explores past alcoholism, her writing life, and family histories.
“Although the dying out of Native populations might make for the tidy completion of narratives, and the idea of a vanishing race has developed an unsavory romantic appeal, the truth is that colonization didn’t wipe out North America’s indigenous peoples.” -Elissa Washuta
Harjo, Joy. Crazy Brave: A Memoir. W. W. Norton, 2012. In Crazy Brave, poet and writer Joy Harjo (former U.S. Poet Laureate) explores her childhood and adolescence as well as her family’s history. Harjo belongs to the Mvskoke Nation and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In an interview with NPR after the release of Crazy Brave, Harjo says:
"At least I've had to come to that in my life, to realize that this stuff called failure, this stuff, this debris of historical trauma, family trauma, you know, stuff that can kill your spirit, is actually raw material to make things with and to build a bridge. You can use those materials to build a bridge over that which would destroy you."
The memoir is permeated with a willingness to process and move beyond the pain of trauma, while still honoring the ways in which this pain follows you through life.
Silko, Leslie. Ceremony. Viking Press, 1977. Ceremony explores the protagonist Tayo’s journey as he navigates PTSD after returning home from war. On his Pueblo reservation there are few mental health resources, but in journeying back into his cultural heritage of ceremonies and cycles, Tayo begins to envision a way forward from his experiences and rejects the alcoholism and violence that has overtaken so many of his fellow tribal members.
“Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there is a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions... on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone. He had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of "nonsense". But they had been wrong.” -Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Do you have books written by Indigenous authors that you’d like to add to this annotated bibliography? Please leave a comment, either with a recommendation or any thoughts you have about any of these books, or anything at all.
