Louise Erdrich utilizes imagery related to the body to communicate criticism of dominant American ideologies or practices that negatively affect marginalized peoples, and in this case, Native Americans in particular. Both poems approach this very broad topic in specific ways: one addresses the trauma of boarding schools, and the other highlights the violence of discriminatory representation on screen. In at least 250 words, consider one or both of these poems using some or all of the following prompts:
1) How does the text utilize imagery of the body to negotiate a Native American poet’s relationship to modern American society?
2) What are some specific examples of the physical body being represented as or through landscape?
3) How does this poem / do these poems relate to the idea of manifest destiny?
When you refer directly to a line of poetry, which you should, put the line number or numbers in parentheses with the author’s last name (if you did not mention it in the signal phrase of the sentence).
