Using contemporary autobiography theory and literary, historical, and ethnographic approaches, Wong explores the transformation of Native American autobiography from pre-contact oral and pictographic personal narratives through late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century life histories to written contemporary autobiographies. This book expands the definition of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self, highlighting the incorporation of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography and charting the...

Louise Erdrich's first novel, Love Medicine, came out in 1984 to instant and international acclaim. A short story cycle narrated by a variety of different characters, the book chronicles the intertwined histories of Chippewa and mixed-blood families in North Dakota over half a century, laying bare the ordeals and joys of twentieth-century Native American life. Like the other books in the series, this Casebook presents important background material to establish the context of the novel, interviews with the author, and pivotal critical responses to the work.