The Native Family Versus the Dominant Culture in American...

The Native Family Versus the Dominant Culture in American Horse by Louise Erdrich The current interest in what has come to be called multicultural literature has focused critical attention on defining its most salient characteristic: authoring a text which appeals to at least two different cultural codes. (Wiget 258) Louise Erdrich says shes an emissary of the between-world. (Bacon) I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life. Her stories unfold where native family and dominant culture clash yet rarely blend, a kaleidoscope of uneasy pieces. The reader becomes the mediator, an observer on the edges as two cultural codes (Wiget 258) collide. She creates dyads: shards of interaction as identities reflect†¦show more content†¦Buddy had been knocked awake out of hiding in a washing machine while herds of policemen with dogs searched through a large building with many tiny rooms. . . .Tss, his mother mumbled, half awake, Wasnt nothing. But Buddy sat up after her breathing went deep again, and he watched. There was something coming and he knew it. (American Horse 196) The reader has sound and visual cues to determine Albertines condition. Is she sleeping or in a stupor? Later the social worker alludes to Albertine as an alcoholic. [But notice that the child only speaks of the sweet scent of powder on his mother, not of alcohol] Buddy is sitting on the edge along with the reader. When Erdrich changed the Buddy character to Redford for a chapter in The Bingo Palace, she included the words that hes been knocked out of a dream where he was hiding in a washing machine. (Bingo Palace 171) providing more insight into how he gained his surrealistic visions. Buddy has a picture in his mind: It was a large thing made of metal with many barbed hooks, points, and drag chains on it, something like a giant potato peeler that rolled out of the sky, scraping clouds down with it and jabbing or crushing everything that lay in its path on the ground. (American Horse 197) In Bingo Palace, it becomes, something like Grandma Zeldas potato peeler providing a concrete connection to Buddys