In both Louise ErdrichÆs Love Medicine and Bharati MukherjeeÆs The Management of Grief, we are presented with two female protagonists who must come to terms with finding a balance to their spirituality and identity while existing in the midst of two disparate cultures. In Love Medicine, June Kashpaw, a Chippewa, struggles to find a spiritual balance between Christianity and traditional American Indian beliefs. In The Management of Pain, BharatiÆs female protagonist, Shaila Bhave, must come to terms with the grief of losing her husband and two sons. By struggling to define an identity that accepts and/or rejects various aspects of both American and Hindu culture, she is able to overcome her grief. Both of these womenÆs dilemmas are caused by the fact that the setting in which they live undermines their native heritage and identity.
The death of June Kashpaw in Love Medicine is symbolic of the fact that JuneÆs homecoming to the Chippewa reservation in North Dakota is a failed homecoming. This is because it is very important for Chippewa to develop a spiritual balance or unity in life, something important to identity formation. However, existing in a setting (i.e., society) that pulls them like a tug-of-war between native tradition and contemporary American values, June is pulled between Christianity and her own native beliefs. JuneÆs death shows that she, like many Chippewa, are vulnerable to the destructive impact of white culture. JuneÆs sense of identity is comparable to MarieÆs views of the small stones at the bottom of a lake, ôàwaves are grinding them smaller and smaller until they finally disappear,ö (Erdrich, p. 73). When June walks into a bar, a place where many Chippewa deal with similar struggles by getting intoxicated, she is described by Erdrich (p. 2) as ôgoing underwater.ö
In BharatiÆs The Management of Grief, Shaila is also pulled in two disparate directions because of her settin
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