Literature

Louise Erdrich's intimate dystopia

8 reading minutes

written by Ivan Garcia · 01 June 2021 · 0 comment

Tuesday books - Ivan Garcia

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, translated into English, follows a young pregnant woman on the run from a religious government that wants to take her child, in a world in the throes of biological regression. A text that resonates with us.

Times are tough: COVID-19, the economic crisis, climate change, rising inequality, rising nationalism… The list of our era’s ills is growing, and, strangely enough, fiction is feeding on them to the point of bursting. In a report from the Swiss Telegraph Agency (ATS), reprinted by the daily newspaper Le Temps, We’ve been told that this past January’s literary season saw no fewer than «493 new novels» hit the shelves. A staggering number. Among this flood of new releases is the translation of the penultimate work[1] by the American novelist Louise Erdrich, titled The Child of the Coming Dawn and originally published in the United States in 2017. This fact is unsettling, especially when you consider the novel’s plot and compare it to the crisis humanity is currently facing.

The Child of the Coming Dawn is the story of Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a young pregnant Ojibwe woman, and the child she is carrying. It is a story of (sur)vival. In contemporary America, a mysterious affliction is consuming humanity: a kind of biological regression that, if left unchecked, threatens to lead to the extinction of the human race. Faced with this hypothetical nightmarish future, women embody hope: the hope for the survival of the species. A new government, composed of members of the ’Church of the New Constitution,« comes to power and, through its »Unborn Protection Society,« tracks down pregnant (and non-pregnant) women to confine them in special centers.

«When I tell you that my white name is Cedar Hawk Songmaker, that I’m the adopted daughter of a progressive couple from Minneapolis, and that after setting out to find my Indigenous parents and learning that I was born Mary Potts, I kept my discovery a secret from everyone, maybe you’ll understand. Or maybe not. I’m going to write this story anyway because things have changed since last week. By all appearances—except that no one knows it—our world is regressing.»

Chronicle of a Pregnant Woman

At the beginning of the book, when the threat is not yet ever-present, Cedar sets out to discover her roots by seeking out her biological mother, Mary Potts, who lives on an Indian reservation. The heroine, who converted to Catholicism against the wishes of her adoptive parents, Ben and Sera—two progressive, hippie-style white people—seeks to reconcile her two identities: that of her Native American ancestors and her life as a young woman raised by upper-middle-class Americans. Two families will provide her with help and support throughout her wild escapade.

The story is written in the first person and takes the form of a diary; «a chronicle,» as the heroine writes. The text thus blends autobiographical elements—such as her health, her encounters, and her moods—with a political and social chronicle that provides the reader with insights into the world surrounding the protagonist. Seeing events through the heroine’s writing helps immerse us in the world she describes, but since her perspective is limited, we ultimately have few details about the new government and the evil plaguing humanity. The author plays with ambiguity, which may delight some readers and frustrate others.

«The police are rounding us all up. That’s what your father explained to me when I finally opened the door for him and turned off the lights in every room. By a narrow majority, the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to strengthen and grant new powers to what was, the Patriot Act, a long time ago. […] Your father tells me that the Secretary of Health has been dismissed, and his successor has announced that pregnant women will be confined to hospitals so they can give birth under supervision.»

Dystopia: A Timely Genre

In this novel, Louise Edrich—a acclaimed novelist in the United States and winner of the prestigious National Book Award—takes on the dystopian genre, that is, a story that depicts a relatively dark and disillusioned imaginary world. For anyone who reads a little or watches TV shows or movies, it’s easy to see that dystopia is a genre that has been on the rise in recent years. Upon reading The Child of the Coming Dawn, one can't help but draw a parallel with other works of the genre, such as The Scarlet Handmaiden by Margaret Atwood, particularly with regard to the fate of women in this crumbling world.

Another nod can be found in one of the mysterious entities, named «Mother,» who appears in the story and contacts Cédar through her computer to ask how she is doing. «Mother» is, in a way, the reassuring face of the new totalitarian regime established by the ’Church of the New Constitution,« which is not without echoes of a certain classic dystopian novel, namely 1984 by George Orwell and his famous «Big Brother.».

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In fact, if dystopian works are really that abundant, one is justified in wondering what a story like The Child of the Coming Dawn. To be clear: even though the author presents us with an original story, it isn’t necessarily as memorable as the other two examples cited above. The book is still an engaging read, however, because the author makes us empathize with the heroine. The American novelist crafts her sentences in such a way that she manages to make us feel Cédar’s pain through words that resonate within us: they come to life.

It is worth noting, moreover, that the heroine and Louise Erdrich both happen to be Ojibwe Native American women, and that the narrative takes the form of a diary, which sheds light on the possible presence of autobiographical elements in this work of fiction; Louise Erdrich is, moreover, considered one of the leading figures of the «Native American Renaissance» movement, it is not impossible to discern in this aesthetic choice a desire to tell the story of a specific individual—that of a Native American woman—especially in our era, when particular importance is placed on giving voice to minorities.

But it would be jumping to conclusions to reduce this story exclusively to its ethnic or marginal dimension. As the story unfolds, the author delights in subverting our expectations and dispelling our clichés. For instance, Sera and Ben, the hippie couple, turn out to be far more «Indian» (or think they are) than Cédar’s biological family; when Cédar says that her child’s father is «an angel,» we don’t exactly expect that she and he made love while dressed in costumes of biblical characters… In the face of the story’s tragedy, the author also makes room for humor and the absurd to lend a touch of lightness to her narrative.

The dystopia created by Louise Erdrich makes for a gripping read. The world the author creates resonates deeply with the issues of our time, and even though it’s highly unlikely that the events described in the story will ever become reality, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the world of tomorrow while keeping in mind that the worst could happen.

[1] As of this writing, Louise Erdrich has published a new book titled The Night Watchman, published by HarperCollins on March 3, 2020. The book, written in English, is not yet available in French.

Write to the author: [email protected]

Photo Credit: © Wikimedia Commons/Alessio Jacona from Rome, Italy – Flickr

Caption for the featured image: photograph of American novelist Louise Erdrich.