Louise Erdrich: The Sentence

The National Book Award-winning author of seventeen novels, Louise Erdrich’s fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. In her new, powerful, and timely novel, The Sentence, Erdrich explores how the burdens of history, and especially identity, appropriation, exploitation, and violence done to human beings in the name of justice, manifest in ordinary lives today. Q&A with Kristen Millares Young and introduction featuring youth poet Jessica Phan from Evergreen High School. Erdrich described Phan’s poem about her acceptance of fear in the time of Covid as, a “wonderful moment in time”.

I feel like I’m always hearing about Louise Erdrich, and that is a wonderful thing. Having won the Pulitzer for her last book, after decades of books spanning series and stand-alone’s, it’s no wonder she’s on the tip of everyone’s literary tongue. I just read Tracks as the beginning to Erdrich’s Love Medicine series’ chronological order. The book for this event, The Sentence, came out this year and is very much a product of its time. I can’t say that it’s stuck in this moment, but Erdrich spoke of how she had begun writing this novel years ago and it was only until the climate crisis, Covid, and George Floyd protests of 2020 that she was able to write it into a setting that fit its content. As she said, “I’m always working on more than one book, I write like an ant, bringing sugar into the colony bit by bit”. It would not have been possible, she mentioned, without the assistance of her daughter who kept regular notes through the marches and protests, the news stories and devastations we all experienced daily. Family is a theme through all her work and hearing her talk about her daughter, it isn’t hard to understand where that comes from. The book is a ghost story and she wrote it “because I wanted to entertain people. Both comforting and haunting, disease is like a haunting” making the setting of our current time prescient for this plot to unfurl. 

Her conversation with Kristen Millares Young, author of Subduction, was full of joy. The energy between the two was electric, even over zoom. Young was so clearly a fan of Erdrich and knew what to ask to get questions I’m sure she had been pondering while reading Erdrich’s work herself. Asking her about the magic rooted in reality that comes up so often throughout Louise Erdrich’s writing, Erdrich explained that she always tried to find a physiological reason for the supernatural. I was so happy to hear this addressed, because reading Tracks I had struggled with how to describe the not entirely possible things that happened in that book without writing them off as make believe. Young followed up with the ghost in The Sentence not having a basis in reality, to which Erdrich replied that the main character, “Tookie is a liar”. Later, Erdrich would talk about how she would go anywhere for book research, “Eventually everything goes in the laptop, but anyone with a pencil and paper can write something down. If you don’t, it’ll never come back to you”. Apparently Erdrich had even written parts of books while sleepwalking! She said it only ever happened when she was pregnant, reiterating that idea of family being a through-line in all of her work.

This conversation grew from talking about Erdrich’s writing into a conversation about literature as a theoretical and political concept. I remember double taking when Erdrich said, “Is literature really a safe space? It depends on our political context”. It came seemingly out of nowhere in response to Young complimenting her on the comfort her writing provides, and without missing a cue, Young dove into that conversation about why words are so necessary, now more than ever. “The first place shut down in a takeover are these places of free thought and speech,” Erdrich reminds the viewer, “I don’t think we know what to do with this because it hasn’t happened here yet” echoing warnings that could also be found in Jelani Cobbs’ speech at his lecture for The Matter of Black Lives. Even when discussing works of fiction, Seattle Arts & Lectures events remain relevant to our zany, godawful time. “People are scared of questioning our history when doing so strengthens what present we have” is another quote that could have been taken from one of the civics related lectures in this series.

Between relevant political conversation, Erdrich and Young continued to talk about the importance of books beyond just being weapons for fighting fascists. I learned that the first books on this land were made from Birchbark, which is where the name for Louise Erdrich’s bookstore comes from. “Sharing opinions of books is one of the most valuable aspects of human connection” Erdrich said as she celebrated Elliot Bay Book Company for being a “treasure-house of combined human opinions”. While Erdrich was celebrating our local bookstore, Young would remind the audience of Erdrich’s own Birchbark, especially as a not dissimilar bookstore with a not dissimilar owner named Louise acted as the main setting in The Sentence. One plot point, of writers sneaking their own copies into the shelves of a bookstore, was pulled from Erdrich’s own life. Apparently these books can’t be sold since they don’t have a receipt of purchase, so Erdrich, much like Tookie in the book, takes them home and reads them herself. Erdrich worried that she might have left something out of the book because there’s so much about being a bookseller that seems perfect for writing into a book. “What is essential? Food, books, and booze” and boy did Erdrich have a lot to say about books. On her active short list of book suggestions was Encounters on the Passage, Standoff, Harlem Shuffle, Trevino Brings Plenty, and 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.

I am so lucky to have attended this book talk with Louise Erdrich who, more than anyone else right now, I want to read the entire canon of. She describes The Sentence as, “really about our attention and inattention to ghosts. About being unable to escape a reckoning. Being haunted by something we’re not aware of is a very American idea” and whether I get it from Seattle Arts & Lectures or Seattle Public Library, I am so looking forward to diving deep into Erdrich’s latest novel. One I am sure, I will be passing along to anyone who will listen.

I review events for #SAL as part of the #SALSuperFanClub; in exchange for a free ticket, I offer my unbiased review.