PowerPoint for Erdrich & Malcolm X

1. HUM16
Arts &
Ideas:
CIVIL RIGHTS &
“ASSIMILATION”

2. 1. Louise Erdrich, poet & novelist
 Born in Little Falls, MN, in 1954 to German-
American father & Chippewa mother (both
teachers at an Indian boarding school)
 Educated at Dartmouth College & Johns Hopkins
 Collaborated with anthropologist from Dartmouth
 became her husband (Michael Dorris)
 Work
 Love Medicine (1984): first novel
 Uses multiple narrators
 Her heritage is significant in her work

3. 2. Indian boarding schools
 Indian boarding schools: developed in 1870s by American
gov’t & Christian missionaries to educate & assimilate Native
American children to European-American customs/standards
 Forbidden to speak native languages
 Euro-American hairstyles & clothing
 Christianized/Anglicized names
 Many documented cases of child abuse (physical, sexual, mental)

4. 3. “Indian Boarding School: The
Runaways” - Themes
 Themes:
 Question: What does the concept of “home” contain?
Ex. “Home’s the place we head for in our sleep./Boxcars stumbling north in
dreams/don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run.” (p. 120)
Home: far away, fleeting, identity, unable to be passed down
 Injustice against indigenous peoples
“The worn-down welts/of ancient punishments lead back and forth” (p. 121).
“All runaways wear dresses, long green ones/the color you would think
shame was” (p. 121).
“…outlines shiver clear/a moment…/…remembering/delicate old injuries, the
spines of names and leaves” (p. 121).

5. 4. “Indian Boarding School: The
Runaways” - Question
 Question: What are the runaways metaphorically running away from &
running toward?
 Question: How does poetry help Erdrich communicate her experience in a way a
traditional essay cannot?

6. 5. Malcolm X, Bio
 Civil rights activist
 Bio (1925-1965)
 Born to outspoken Baptist father & mother
 Father killed when Malcolm X was 6
 conflicting accounts about whether it was racially
motivated
 Mother had nervous breakdown (he was 13)
 Separated from siblings & all sent to foster homes
 Educated only to middle school
 Arrested in 1945 for larceny – sentenced to prison
 Converted to Nation of Islam (encouraged by siblings)
 Self-educated
 Assassinated in 1965 by NOI

7. 6. Malcolm X, civil rights activist
 Work
 Black nationalist with Nation of
Islam (Black separatist)
 Left NOI; converted to Sunni Islam
 Civil rights activist
 Advocate for human rights
 Advocate for taking up arms if work
to gain rights was unsuccessful
 Tried to reconnect African-
Americans with heritage
 Elevate self-esteem

8. 7a. Malcolm X, “A Homemade Education”
 “Not even Elijah Muhammad could have been more eloquent than those
books were in providing indisputable proof that the collective white man
had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world’s
collective non-white man.” (p. 111)
 Question: Why does Malcolm X refer to the “collective” white man?

9. 7b. Malcolm X, “A Homemade Education”
 “The American black man is the world’s most shameful case of minority
oppression. What makes the black man think of himself as only an internal
United States issue is just a catch-phrase, two words, ‘civil rights.’ How is
the black man going to get ‘civil rights’ before first he wins his human
rights? If the American black man will start thinking about his human
rights, and then start thinking of himself as part of one of the world’s great
peoples, he will see he has a case for the United Nations.” (p. 113)
 Question: Are civil rights and human rights different? Why does Malcolm X
think so?