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This paper examines the correspondence between travel and disease in Native American novels Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko and Tracks (1988) by Louise Erdrich. Juxtaposing the novels' protagonists, Tayo and Pauline, it focuses on the detrimental effects of their dislocation from the tribal matrix and their contact with the dominant world. Whereas Tayo's identity quest is centripetal and in itself represents a "homing--‐in" journey, a ceremony of convalescence from the painful emotional ramifications of World War II trauma and his alienation from the Pueblo tradition, Pauline's voyage to the all-white community of Argus leads to a complete mental imbalance and disintegration. In her attempt to assimilate, Pauline becomes obsessed with racial purity and Christianity, and engages in malicious and dysfunctional behavior. Struggling to deny her Anishinaabe background and purge herself from "its evils, " she harms and kills other people, starts practicing bizarre rituals of asceticism and bodily mortification, and ultimately descends into madness. Observing the two characters' different understanding of indigenous epistemologies, and interpreting their bodies as constructs "imprinted by history" and "disciplinary discursive practices, " the paper attempts to expose the correlation between disease and colonization, i.e. healing and decolonization.

This paper interprets Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks in light of Louis Owens’ frontier theory. According to Owens, the concept of the frontier encompasses not just the physical terrain but also the psychological and cognitive aspects of the colonial encounter. It is a dangerously unstable, indeterminate and hybridized space that refuses to be confined through boundaries and serves as a dynamic zone of resistance. Utilizing the conventions of magical realism and the grotesque, Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) creates such a frontier zone in which the discourse of hegemony is estranged, and power relations reworked and reversed.

The paper examines the relation between the fantastic and the (post)colonial character of Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks. Employing the fantastic through magical realism, the discourse of madness and the grotesque, Erdrich devised a polyphonic text that effectively questions and destabilizes the consistency of colonial symbols and identity constructs. This narrative technique is observable in the characterization of Pauline Puyat, one of the main protagonists and narrators in the novel, whose assimilation in the Western culture results in her complete renouncement and hatred of her indigenous heritage and identity. Yet, Pauline's identification with the dominant worldview, her obsession with Christianity and racial purity, manifests itself as mental illness and (self)destructive behavior that includes bizarre acts of penance, neglect of hygiene and a morbid wish to kill her unborn baby to save it from sin. Ironically, through her attempt to cleanse herself of her paganism, Pauline becomes spiritually, physically and morally the most unclean character in the novel. Mortifying and terrorizing her body to protect herself from the evils of nature and the temptations of instincts – sources of shame, corruption and barbarity, Pauline attests to the fact that the body is a construct "imprinted by history" and "disciplinary discursive practices" , the "‘text’ on which colonisation has written some of its most graphic and scrutable messages" . Yet, Pauline's rigid understanding of faith leads her not only to insanity but also to sin. In spite of her Christian creed and her sharp detachment from her heathen roots, she manifests occult tendencies and supernatural abilities that she regularly uses for evil purposes - to commit murder, adultery, deception, and various malicious acts. Possessed by magic and visions, she uses satanic methods to serve Christ's purpose, thus exhibiting the very traits that she claims to defy. Conflating Ojibwa and Judeo-Christian cosmologies by blurring the boundaries between the real, mythic, magical and supernatural, Erdrich exposes the inconsistency of Pauline's missionary pursuit, and highlights wickedness, selfishness, and immorality as its main features. Thereupon, using magical elements, she disturbs the coherence of the imperial dogma and its evangelical tools. This narrative effect concurs with Homi Bhabha's definition of hybridity – the reversal of "the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other 'denied' knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority - its rules of recognition" . Drawing upon Bhabha's hybridity theory and Mikhail Bakhtin's conceptualization of the grotesque, the analysis additionally juxtaposes the use of the fantastic in Erdrich's text to its commitment to epistemological translation, historical revisionism, cultural memory and emancipation.

This reading of Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) focuses on the debated relationship between postmodern literature and history, as well as postcolonial theory. Observing the signals of magical realism, Rabelaisian grotesque and the discourse of madness, as evinced through the characterization of Pauline Puyat, the analysis attempts to demonstrate Erdrich's postmodern strategies of historical revisionism and anti- imperial translation, and the concomitant synthesis of the postmodern and postcolonial perspectives. The discourse of madness identifies the wickedness, selfishness and corruption as the main features of Pauline's missionary pursuit, exposes the imperialist construct of indigenous identity, as well as the psycho-physical perils of its internalization. By problematizing and pluralizing the real in a typically postmodern way, drawing upon the techniques of magical and grotesque realism, the novel offers an ironical transcription of the binary dogma on racial purity and superiority. Attributing Pauline with the very traits that she claims to defy, Erdrich juxtaposes this dogma with the rhetoric of conversion, challenging the dominant epistemology, its colonial historiography, symbols and strategies.

Louise Erdrich is an important contemporary Native American writer of mixed heritage, known for her peculiar narrative style that employs intratextuality and the use of multiple narrators, presenting the readers with narrative crossovers and the possibility to perceive her fictional world from a variety of perspectives. One of the prominent themes that Erdrich explores in her novels is the perception of femininity and fluid gender identity. Her novels Love Medicine (1984) and Tracks (1988) introduce certain female characters whose looks and personalities can be compared to those of traditional Native American archetypes the berdache and the trickster the figures with no fixed identity that combine elements of various cultures, worlds, and even genders, and live in marginal and liminal spaces. This paper discusses the concept of the trickster in Love Medicine and Tracks as a tool for deconstructing the stereotypes about Native American women and the Western concept of gender roles and gender identity, observable both as an element of characterization and as a narrative strategy. It focuses on the characters of Fleur Pillager, June Morrissey, Lulu Nanapush, and Marie Kashpaw, whose identity is liminal and fluid as they incorporate both the feminine and the masculine traits. In other to uncover these characters' berdache/trickster nature, the analysis pays special attention to their physical appearance, personality, character, social status, relationship with other characters, as well as their ability to transcend both the physical and the narrative boundaries. Finally, it defines Louise Erdrich's unique technique of narrative fragmentation and playfulness as an important indicator of the trickster discourse.

One of the important and characteristic elements of contemporary Native American writing is the style of magical realism. For Native Americans, oral tradition is very important. Storytelling has been used as a way to preserve the tradition and rituals of their predecessors. Frequently, such stories erase the boundaries between the real and the magical. They attempt to convey a certain message and to teach the individuals how to behave and act in the present world. Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko use magical realism in their novels to depict and emphasize the values of the community and preserve their tribal histories stories and therefore, tradition for the future. This paper analyzes two Native American novels: Silko’s Ceremony and Erdrich’s Tracks. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977) and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988). Silko’s novel Ceremony depicts a story of a struggling individual who tries to preserve his Native identity in an ever degrading Western society. By using magical realism, Silko managed to connect old Native folktales with the modern world and show the importance of preserving and adjusting to the past traditions. In Tracks, Erdrich deals with many issues like the Natives’ loss of land, their starvation and destruction by disease and relationship to the animal world. By presenting a story through two different perspectives she puts an emphasis on the importance of the community and its survival, which turns out to be possible only through storytelling.