Resisting White Supremacy and Constructing Ethnic/Female Identity: Magical Resistance in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks
Abstract
Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, which is rooted in Native American cultural context, expresses the ‘other’ or alternative version(s) of events and attempts to fill in fissures or silence of official history from the contexts of the followers of particular social, cultural and religious practices of reality. Erdrich has employed magic or the supernatural to subvert a realist worldview and to resist colonial supremacy. The article aims to show that by giving Native American women a voice using magic, Tracks is centered on the alternative version(s) of history or reality and the notion of comprehending the past and memory. The article also aims to show how Erdrich equips her female characters with the power of magic to resist female marginalization and protest white supremacy. From this perspective, Erdrich’s magical realism serves a political purpose.
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References
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