The Red Convertible

Louise Erdrich's short story "The Red Convertible", which was published as part of her book Love Medicine, is a blend of the authentically autobiographical and the artistically Modernist. Her own life has been marked in many ways by the fundamental themes of Modernism - alienation, disillusionment, fragmentation, and uncertainty - for Erdrich's background is one of cultural and biological division, with a German-American father and a Chippewa mother who combined their traditions and beliefs in Erdrich's natal household. She grew up in a household in which stories and the spoken word were valued, but the stories that were told could be either based on Byronic poems or Chippewa traditions; these stories were almost necessarily built up of the fragments of different elements.

Even more important in terms of the overall Modernist bent of her work, Erdrich grew up in a household that was marginalized from American society because it was biracial. The fact that she so strongly identifies with the American Indian side of her family ensured that she would feel even more marginali

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