Out of the 22 Pulitzer Prizes, 15 are for journalism and the remaining for arts and letters, which include fiction, general non-fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry and music. This year, Louise Erdrich’s novel ‘The Night Watchman’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
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Journalism’s highest honours – the Pulitzer Prizes – were announced in June. They were awarded to the best stories and reporting for the last year which was shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and a polarising US Presidential election. The Associated Press, The New York Times, and Minneapolis’s Star Tribune were among the publications that won accolades.
Out of the 22 Pulitzer Prizes, 15 are for journalism and the remaining are for arts and letters, which include fiction, general non-fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry and music. This year, Louise Erdrich’s novel ‘The Night Watchman’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The novel is about the fight to stop the displacement and elimination of several Native American tribes in the 1950s. Erdrich, who is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, has based the novel on her maternal grandfather, who had worked as a night watchman and taken the issue of Native dispossession from rural North Dakota to Congress. Pulitzer judges called Erdrich’s novel “a majestic, polyphonic novel about a community’s efforts to halt the proposed displacement and elimination of several Native American tribes in the 1950s, rendered with dexterity and imagination.”
The author has won other literary awards for her past works as well. She is known to base her stories on personal experiences and blends the traditions of oral and written storytelling to present nuanced tales. While ‘The Night Watchman’ should definitely be on your reading list, here are some others books by Erdrich which you should not miss.
Love Medicine
This was Erdrich’s debut novel and was first published in 1984. Subsequently, the author revised and expanded the novel in 1993 and 2009 editions. ‘Love Medicine’ focuses on the lives of five interconnected Ojibwe families who live on fictional reservations in Minnesota and North Dakota. The stories follow a non-linear format and each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character. The recurring themes in this novel are that of identity, home, belonging and humour, among others. Erdrich won the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for this novel.
The Round House
It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 2012 and the novel is the second book of Erdrich's ‘justice trilogy’ of novels – the other two are ‘The Plague of Doves’ (2008) and ‘LaRose’ (2016). ‘The Round House’ follows the story of Joe Coutts, a 13-year-old boy, who is angry with the poor investigation into his mother’s brutal sexual attack. In a book review for NPR, Alan Cheuse wrote, “Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in ‘The Round House’.”
Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country
This book is an amalgamation of history, mythology, and memoir. Erdrich gives readers a peek into the land her ancestors have inhabited for centuries: the lakes and islands of southern Ontario. We get a glimpse of Ojibwe’s sacred spirits and songs, their language and sorrows – many ways in which Erdrich’s tribe has influenced her. Read to know more about this award-winning author.
The Birchbark House
‘The Birchbark House’ is about Omakayas, a seven-year-old girl, and her family. It takes the reader through a year marked by challenge, tragedy, and triumph and how Omakayas and her Ojibwa community work together to survive on their island home in Lake Superior. This is the first book in a five book series known as The Birchbark series. This novel also includes pencil drawings, a map of the Ojibwa community and a glossary of Ojibwa language translations.
Original Fire: Selected and New Poems
She may be identified more as a novelist, but she won a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 1983 and was named associate poet laureate of North Dakota in 2005. This book comprises selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, ‘Jacklight’ and ‘Baptism of Desire’, along with 19 new poems. Critic John Freeman wrote in the Star Tribune in 2003, that in the book “Erdrich weaves desire into themes of memory, home and history — especially American Indians’ history of hunting and being hunted.”
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