Crossing Borders in Love Medicine and Tracks: Preserving the Anishinabe Culture

Abstract

Louise Erdrich's novel Love Medicine and Tracks focus upon the effects of multicultural age. In this era of globalization, no one is willing to be under the dictatorship of others. There are different cultures, traditions, customs, rituals and languages. People having all these different varieties live together. The world is highly advanced and richly scientific and technological. Because of the development of the science and technology the world is just like a home and we all are the members of the same family. But there is some demarcation line and there is border too. This thesis shows that Erdrich, product of the different cultures, indirectly focuses upon towards "sameness being different". She shows the pathetic condition of the people from Chippewa tribe who experience a peculiarly American form of apartheid, characterized by segregation, discrimination, cultural imperialism and everyday violence. Native American across the country continues to experience myriad and interrelated forms of economic, political and social oppression. This thesis examines how the novels Love Medicine and Tracksdealt with the two cultures which are totally different in each other. The supremacy of white culture is somehow the fence of native's exposure. The white people think themselves the superior one. One the other hand, the natives suffer from inferiority complex which produces obstacles to go a head. In such a condition we have to cross the border, especially the cultural borders to live happily and without any bias. We have to understand the hybrid identity which is the chief necessity of present generation. This thesis goes on to prove that Erdrich's Love Medicine and Tracks carry the theme of crossing border and hybridity. That is to say, global unity is above the local divisions.