Fifth Post: Love Medicine

Examine the relationship between two characters.

One of the relationships I found most interesting in this book, “Love Medicine” was the relationship between Marie Lazarre and Sister Leopolda. When Leopolda is first introduced, she’s in a house for nuns that is for nuns who don’t fit in anywhere else, so right from the start the reader can tell that something is off. Leopolda is extremely conscience about Satan and watched out for him. If she saw him in someone, she would try to beat Satan or get Satan out of him or her. Leopolda sees Satan inside Marie. One day, Marie notices Satan in the room and smiles. Leopolda throws Marie in the closet where Satan was and hit her with her pole. Marie realizes and says, “The real way to overcome Leopolda was this: I’d get to heaven first” (Erdrich 48). So Marie travels to the house in order to get to heaven before Leopolda. They cook together and Marie drops a cup under the stove. As she bends down to get the cup, Leopolda pours hot water on her to try to get Satan out of her. Then Leopolda nurses to Marie’s wounds. All of a sudden, Leopolda keeps repeating the phrase, “Help me”. They go to get the bread out of the oven and Marie pushes her into the oven, but Leopolda stabs her hand and hits her head. Marie is knocked out and when she wakes she’s surrounded by people who are worshiping her, saying she’s a saint because Leopolda told them that the mark on her hand suddenly appeared. Marie has now rid herself of Satan and knows she will beat Leopolda and get to heaven first. Their relationship is one of violence but also care. They look out for each other and try to rid each other of Satan, though they use violence to do so. I’m not sure if that is because they honestly hate each other or that they care for each other so much that they would do anything to rid each other of Satan. I believe that they care about each other because at one point Marie says she wants Leopolda’s love. I think there is also competition between them, because both know that Satan is inside of them and they both want to get rid of it sooner than the other. I believe that Satan might take over in their bodies sometime and cause their violence. I have never read a book with characters like this, so I think it’s very interesting to examine the different types of relationships from different books.

Fourth Post: Love Medicine

Does your novel represent a non-American culture? What does it say about that culture?

My novel, “Love Medicine” represents Native American culture. I do not know much about Native American culture, but I have noticed a theme of “brokenness” in the novel so far. I believe this theme may suggest that the Native American culture is broken. From what I know about Native Americans is that the Whites never treated them well. We took their land and treated them poorly when we settled here. They were never seen as Americans. I believe that the Whites mistreatment of the Indians may have led to the brokenness of their culture. Since they had to deal with the mistreatment, they may have felt broken. Also, I believe that many people often leave reservations, which may pull families apart, adding to the broken culture. This book also shows that the families that live on the reservations are very close. This idea of family closeness makes sense to me because they live in the same place so they can always be together. I am a bit jealous of this because I would love to be closer with my relatives, but they all live far away so it is hard to remain close. The closeness is first shown in part two of chapter one, when Albertine returns to the reservation and they have a family gathering. So far, it is not clear why Albertine has left the reservation in the first place. When her Aunt June dies, Albertine’s mom does not invite her to the funeral and instead sends a letter to inform Albertine of the death. By making inferences, I believe that Albertine may have left the reservation because she wanted a different life. It explains her studying so maybe she wanted a better education and had to leave her family to do so. Perhaps the reason why she was not invited to the funeral was because she left the reservation, adding to this common theme of “brokenness”. I believe that when people return back to the reservation, everyone becomes close again because they want to spend time with whoever is returning. Again, most of this post is filled with inferences that could be wrong, but I am excited to keep reading to find out if any inferences I made were correct.

Third Post: Unaccustomed Earth

React to the following quote, in regard to your novel:

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” J.D. Salinger

When I first began reading this book, I was not a fan. I found the first chapter dull and was confused about why the chapters jumped from family to family. When I got further into the book, I began to enjoy it more and more. Suddenly, I couldn’t put it down.

First of all, I hardly ever read books about other cultures, and when I do it has always been for school. I do not know much about other cultures and I realized after reading this book that I would like to.
I wish I could call up Lahiri because I want to know her story. I would like her to tell me her whole life, from beginning to the present. I would like to know what influenced her to write the stories that are in this book. Was she inspired by her own life? Did she go through some of the same situations that these characters did?

I know I can find some of these answers online, most likely in an interview of some sort, but I do not have any desire to do that. I want to hear from Lahiri herself and have a conversation with her.

I felt like all of the stories were dark, none of them had happy endings. I would like to know why. Does she believe no one in this culture receives a happy ending? Does she wish something in her life went differently?

I believe that since this book is so interesting and filled with many different stories, that the writer must have to be interesting and filled with many different stories as well.

I was so surprised at how dark the endings of the stories turned out to be. I feel like no one got what they wanted and nothing turned out well for the people.

This is the part of the book that I’m still struggling with. I just would like to know why the author made this choice and why that happened.

 Overall, I wish I could call Lahiri so that we could have a conversation and so that I could talk to her about her life as well as the choices she made in this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and this book inspires me to read other books about different cultures so that I can become a more rounded individual.

Second Post: Unaccustomed Earth

Examine the cover of the novel. What is it expressing about the story?

It is so easy to judge a book by its cover, hence the cliché phrase. When this book first arrived from Amazon.com, I thought it was going to be a boring book. The cover seemed terribly Photoshop-ed. I am an extremely visual learner and somewhat artistic, so I like to use the cover to try to guess what the book will be about.  I also like to examine the cover art to see how it plays into the story.

At first glance, I believed the gold circle was a crown of some sort. It looked like the ‘gold crown’ had just fallen in the water, which is why it appeared to be floating. My next idea was that maybe the main character had fallen off a boat and drowned. As he or she fell off, his or her crown did as well and they both toppled into the ocean.

Throughout the book, I was looking for water imagery or crown imagery, something to allude me to the cover. I found nothing that seemed to resemble the cover in any of part one.

Between the pages of 312-313, I found my first clue. The narrator is referring to a bangle that Hema owns, “She had always loved the design, small four-petaled flowers threaded along a vine” (Lahiri 312-313). Finally, I realized that what I thought was the crown on the front page was actually Hema’s bangle.

The bangle represents her past because it was her grandmother’s and she had always worn it. Hema’s past is very important because in the third chapter of part two, she reunites with Kaushik, a male from her childhood. Kaushik even remembers that Hema wore the bracelet when she was growing up.

When I finished the book, I was still unsure as to why the bracelet was in the water.

I was confused with the very ending of the book, but I believe that Kaushik drowned in the tsunami. The way it was written, I was unsure if that is how he passed away but I am inferring he did.

Throughout part two, water was a motif throughout Kaushik’s life. His mom loved water and wanted a house with a pool or a waterfront view. Also, in the end of the book before Kaushik moved to Hong Kong, he spends his days on a beach.

Then, he drowns in a tsunami.

So, on the cover of the book, the bangle is getting ‘washed away’ in the tsunami water. This representation shows that any evidence of the past is gone. She had forgotten the bangle at the airport and Kaushik is now dead. Her past is literally washed away, and she is forced to start anew and move into the present and the future with her new husband Navin.

1st Post: Unaccustomed Earth

Q: Is there a puzzle in your story that you are trying to solve?

A: Yes, I am trying to solve a puzzle to figure out how exactly these stories fit together. I am a little over halfway through the book at this point. On a basic level, these individual stories are all about Indian families who have moved to the United States. What hasn't been addressed, however, is whether these families know each other. I have been trying to fit these stories together and compare and contrast them to each other. I am also wondering if these families all know each other and will come together for a reunion or a party in the end of the story. My other wonder is if this reunion doesn't happen, will the reader find out the relationship that connects all of the individual stories. My third wonder is if any of the characters will have a second chapter.
What I have noticed is that there seems to be conflict or struggle in each story. I don't know anything about the author, so I'm wondering if she was an immigrant from India who moved to the United States and struggled here. She might be trying to show that there will always be conflict for the immigrants who move here because it's such a different world.
I noticed conflict immediately in the first chapter, "Unaccustomed Earth". I noticed the struggle between Ruma and her father. It almost seemed like her father was favoring the son, Akash. He seemed to enjoy the time spent with the son more than the time spent with Ruma. I believe that this is because he was upset with Ruma for not raising the son with Indian culture. Though the book never directly states that, I believe that is true because the Akash's grandpa spends time with Akash and even teaches him Bengali words.
The next chapter, about Pranab Chakraborty switches to first person point of view, while the last chapter was in third person point of view. This is another puzzle that I'm trying to solve, to figure out why it switched. I do believe that the second chapter is more effective because of its first person point of view. The reader receives a direct entrance to the story, told by the daughter who sees her mother fall in love with another man.
Most of the other chapters have family conflict and struggles, culture conflict and struggles, and fitting in conflict and struggles. The struggle I found most interesting was the one Rahul and his family. Rahul becomes an alcoholic and it seems to just take over his life. I wondered if this is common for immigrant families. I would believe that it could be because the immigrants could be so caught up in this "American culture" and they get sucked in and end up making bad choices.
So far, I am really enjoying this book and I think every story is interesting in its own, unique way.