What's Your Love Medicine?

This week’s reading is Love Medicine. Written by a Native American author, it focuses on a Native American family and their history through (according to the family tree in the front) five generations. The first half of the book focuses on three of those generations, with a bit of insight from one member of the fourth.

The Kashpaw family lives on a western reservation. Beginning with the death of one of the adopted grown children of Marie and Nector Kashpaw, the book then takes the reader into their lives. The story bounces from one character to another--sometimes members of the same family and sometimes only connected by adoption or love-affair. The author illustrates how the decisions made by one generation can affect those generations that follow.

The author paints pictures with her words, allowing passages to flow with a poetic beauty and rhythm:

“I was not immune, and I would not leave undamaged. To this day, I still hurt. I must have rolled in the beds of wild rose, for the tiny thorns—small, yellow—pierced my skin. Their poison is desire and it dissolved in my blood. The cats made me one of them—sleek and without mercy, avid, falling hungry upon the defenseless body. I want to grind men’s bones to drink in my night tea. I want to enter them the way their hot shadows fold into their bodies in full sunlight. I want to be their food, their harmful drink, to taste men like stilled jam at the back of my tongue” (82).

These words are from Lulu Nanapush, who has married Moses Pillager, a ‘dead’ man who lives as a hermit on an island not far from where Lulu lives. Her marriage to him is in the traditional Ojibwe sense (prologue/family tree). She does love the man, even though she eventually leaves him. The author, Louise Erdrich, paints a picture of Lulu as someone who will not be bound to a man, but who will bind men to her. She will be their poison, the cause of their downfall, and this is the woman she becomes. I include that passage because it is so beautifully written with its poetic flow and mental images. It made an impression on me.

Another impression I get from the book is that the women are the backbone of their men. Nector says, “It seems as though, all my life up till now, I have not had to make a decision. I just did what came along, went wherever I was taken, accepting when I was called on” (141). While the Native American culture may be largely patriarchal, in Erdrich’s book it is the women who have the strength. The men turn to alcohol, they often beat their wives, they have affairs and illegitimate children, yet the women uphold them and stay with them. This is especially true of Marie Lazarre, the wife of Nector Kashpaw. He is unable to hold a job, what money he does earn he often spends on binges. Marie continues to bear children and to take in children that do not belong to her. She feeds them and cares for them, treating them as her own, and she supports herself the only ways she knows, “I was saving cream to sell in those days, trying to make butter, piecing quilts, sewing other people’s clothes, beading dance outfits, whatever I could do to get by without Nector” (97). She is the support of the family, both financially and emotionally. I admire her strength and wish I could be as strong.

The style of the book puts me in mind of The Thorn Birds, with its generational organization and religious undertones. While religion doesn’t really play a big part in the story itself, it is a part of it none the less. We first meet Marie as she is wishing she could become a Saint. Some of the chapter names can have Christian meanings as well (something that was pointed out to me by another student on the class BB), such as the allusion to Fishermen in the first chapter, Saint Marie, Flesh and Blood, and later, Crown of Thorns, and Resurrection.

The Native American culture is rich in its story telling traditions and this story goes along those lines. The pictures Erdrich draws and the way she weaves this family’s story is strong in details and complete in the image she gives us of the Kashpaw family and those connected with them. I don’t think this book will have a happy ending, in the sense that many of us come to expect many books to end. I think it will end with the newest generation learning some things from those preceding it, but falling victim to many of the same traps as well.

He still ain't lyin'.

For me, the hardest part of this book was my inability to piece things together with some form of organization. I find it difficult to quote passages because I’m unsure of how they actually fit together to prove whatever point it is that I am trying to make. The story is such a jumble of thoughts and facts and nonsensical meanderings that I found it difficult to make much sense of it. It is obviously the story of conflicting cultures and differing ways of life. I also see it as a struggle between acceptance and non acceptance, change and non change. I get angry at the thought of Whites being portrayed in such brutish manners, with no real culture of their own and in staunch opposition to the idea of any other culture being real, or good enough to belong in our society. I, for one, do not agree. I love the exploration of other cultures and to me, it helps to clarify my own history and adds color and depth to my traditions. It makes me open my mind to historical/religious possibilities other than those I grew up learning and believing.

Oh.

Wait a minute.

Therein lies the problem, don’t you think? Maybe I am one of a minority of people who believes that there is more than one way to view history, and that perhaps my way is only part of the big picture. Maybe my willingness to be open-minded and eager to learn is the very thing that the Wallflower Order seeks to stop. If one culture makes the claim that perhaps their way isn’t the only way, don’t they risk losing their traditions and diluting their beliefs? Maybe- but I choose to believe that the beliefs of others can only add depth and color to our understanding of our own.

So, off the soap-box and on to the next point. What in the world is Jes Grew? I thought it was the culture of the African American and that the ‘plague’ was the spread and growth of that culture. Suddenly people were standing up and saying, “Hey! I count! My view and my traditions and my history counts!” So why try to squelch that? Because if you are a member of the Wallflower Order, you can see your own history being brought into question because it varies from the history of another culture. The culture that you have tried so hard to cultivate may have to step back and admit that maybe it’s just one fish in a pond full of other fish.

I loved what one of my classmates said on our board. I’ll quote her here:

“Ah, so I guess that Jes Grew is the anti-plague to the suppression and conformity of blacks living in white America - losing touch with their roots and mother culture? The cure is to reclaim and celebrate their heritage. The real disease is having no identity” (CG).

I found those words profound. Isn’t that what is happening? Not just within the Black Culture, but within so many different cultures- they are losing their very identity and heritage, it is being watered down by the American culture- or non-culture- however you choose to see it. America, being a relatively young country, has no long standing traditions; we have had to make new ones: fireworks on the Fourth of July, Patriots Day (for those of us in New England), even our beloved Thanksgiving is a part of our new culture. Look at what has recently been added: We now celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, and Kwanzaa has been added to our calendars. These are important steps toward acceptance of other cultures as well as those cultures embracing their own histories and traditions. Does that make sense?

Anyway- I’ll be honest and say that I am glad this book is behind me. It was a challenge from the beginning. I am sure Reed said what he needed to, but I wish he’d said it in a way that was a bit easier for me to grasp. I am still not sure that he got through to me the point he was trying to make.

Or perhaps he did.

He Ain't Lyin' When He Says Mumbo Jumbo!

Painful. That is the word that comes to mind as I forced myself to crawl through this week’s reading. It was painful. Ok- maybe I’m being a bit over-dramatic there, but let me explain.

This book was written in the mid 70s and it takes place in New York in the mid 20s. This was a turbulent time in American History to begin with. As a nation, we were struggling through the aftermath of a war that had taken thousands of young American men to Europe and returned them maimed-physically and/or emotionally-if they were returned to us at all. Alcohol had been made illegal, the flapper generation was pulling at the moral fiber of our country and the blacks were in the mix as well, trying to find their rightful place in society.

This seems to be what Mumbo Jumbo is about: finding that rightful place, but the style of writing is jumbled and chaotic. There is a mix of fact and fiction; real names and real places interact with the fictional names and places. The mix makes me wonder how much of what I was reading really happened and what is made up of whole cloth. I suppose this adds an element of believability to the story.

Though the book is supposed to be “a racy and uproarious commentary on our society”(back cover), I have yet to even crack a smile. I see the book as a clash between black and white. The whites in the book (most of them) want things to stay the same and they feel the blacks should keep their place in society as backward, submissive, uneducated former slaves, while the whites continue to dominate society and keep the blacks from progressing as they naturally would and should. This archaic attitude has caused discontent and anger between both races. It makes me want to say, “I don’t understand.. why can’t we all just get along?” Adding to the difficulty is the style in which the book is written. 1's are used instead of the word one. Quotations aren't marked, making it difficult to figure out who is talking to whom. There seems to be no organization to the chapters or to the order of the book. The rules are ignored. Is that one of the points the author is trying to make? No one is following the rules?

So- what is the first half of the book about? I wish I knew. We have two cultures clashing- one culture is arrogant and brutish while the other is intelligent and sophisticated. The whites are portrayed as the brutes, trying to force this other, alien culture back underground. Meanwhile, Jes Grew, a plague to some, anti-plague to others is making its way around the country, infecting people by the tens of thousands. What is Jes Grew? Is it acceptance? Is this why the dominant culture wants to squelch it, so they can force the other culture into hiding and submission?

I have begun work on the second half of the book and that will, I hope, shed a bit of light on what I have read thus far. This has, admittedly, been a difficult read for me, but now I need to know if it is my own attitude that prevents my understanding or if the book itself is the stumbling block.

Stay tuned.

Family Linen Part 2

After a week away, I’m back with the continuation of Family Linen.

The second half of this book is as entertaining as the first with some subtle shifts in the narrative voice. Smith relies less on the view points of the individual character and shows more interaction. This, as mentioned by several classmates, is a sort of “weaving” of the fabric of the story, much like linen is woven together (my paraphrasing). After Elizabeth dies, her children are left to deal with the pain that her death causes each of them. However, they now learn to lean on one another to help deal with that pain. They slowly begin to learn to accept one another and to come together as a family unit, something that was not possible as long as their mother was alive. Elizabeth’s views and personal issues spilled over onto her children, thus preventing them from bonding with one another early in life.

There is only one chapter in which we ‘meet’ Elizabeth and it is very enlightening. Until that point in the book, the reader sees Elizabeth only through the eyes of her children and siblings. To see her life through her own eyes gave me a deeper understanding of her.

Days of Light and Darkness: Memoirs

Elizabeth has a flair for the dramatic as well as the poetic. Her writing style is elegant and fits the elegant manner in which she has tried to live. Unfortunately, that elegance is not terribly realistic, nor are her views of the world around her. She is angry about her sister Nettie’s tom-boyish ways. She feels hurt at her father’s seeming preference of Nettie over her, even though it is Elizabeth who tries so hard to make their home comfortable and inviting after their mother’s death. I thought of Elizabeth as a very traditional Southern Bell who was born a hundred years too late. Her thoughts, her writing style, and her morals seem to hearken back to an earlier day, the day of plantations and hoop skirts. She does not fit in well in the 20th Century.

The chapter written from Elizabeth’s viewpoint is a short one and it is the only chance we have to get to know her as she sees herself. I would have liked to see more of her life as she grew older and had children.

It is from Nettie that we learn about Elizabeth’s first husband, Jewell, and what really happens to him. It is not Elizabeth who kills him, but Fay, with whom he has fathered a daughter. Jewell repeatedly takes advantage of Fay and her mental handicap. He rapes her, as Nettie witnesses,

“And the worst part about it was Fay’s face, which I could still see, I could see her face all the time, over Jewell’s back, above his white shirt. Her face had changed from that waiting, knowing look into something terrible where wanting and hating went back and forth like the shadows of clouds across a field, back and forth faster and faster, ending up as something awful which you’ve not got the words to say” (234-5).

Fay gives birth to Candy, who is raised as Elizabeth’s daughter and it is Fay who kills Jewell and dumps his body in the well--not Elizabeth, as Sybill remembers through hypnosis.

Toward the book's end, many things happen at once. The body of Jewell is found, Sean tries to kill his father, but the gun misfires, and Fay is found dead.

The book abruptly moves forward some weeks to Karen’s wedding. Elizabeth’s children are learning to be a family and that their differences aren’t really all that important. Family is family and you accept them and love them anyway. It’s a rather hokey thought, but an apt one, I suppose. Don and Myrtle have done some work on the family homestead and are now living there. The wedding of their pregnant daughter Karen has brought the family together again, but this time it is under happier circumstances. They seem much more accepting of one another and it is difficult to imagine the scene unfolding happily if Elizabeth was still alive. It was she who kept the family apart for so many years. Now that she is gone, the siblings are free to see one another through different eyes, not through the eyes of their mother. There is no more competing for her love and approval.

I did enjoy the book, but I felt that it hurried the ending a bit. I would have enjoyed seeing a bit more of the healing process as it happened between the siblings, though Smith did manage to wrap it up fairly neatly and without any gaping holes. Sybill lost some of her bitterness and edge, Myrtle lost some of her need for approval. Sean learned the importance of his parents and that, though they may be pains in the butt, they really do mean well. Lacy is accepting her lot in life, that of divorced woman; Candy continues to style hair, oblivious to her real parentage and Arthur seems to have found a woman who may be able to keep him in line while helping Nettie and Clinus in the process. Basically, Family Linen is a story about a dysfunctional family realizing that they can be dysfunctional and still love one another. Another happy ending