Indian Boarding School: The Runaways by Louise Erdrich – Flashcards
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lacerations (190)
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noun. a deep cut that needs time to heal (physical or symbolic)
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Background information based on NPR report?
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- the school despised the American Indian heritage and tried to assimilate them to white culture - schools shaved students' heads, changed names, manual labor - "erase and replace" -as of 2008, nearly half now run by American Indians (about 7 left) - learned trades not academic subjects - run by U.S. government - about 10,000 students who went - running out of funding - some parents willingly sent their children b/c no other option (public schools not open to American Indians at the time) - abusive to students - designed like a prison - now a switch, American Indians now fighting to keep them open: few ways to preserve the culture now (now teach native languages) - zero-tolerance for drugs
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What kind of conflict do the speakers experience? Are the conflicts resolved?
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- the boarding students vs. the police officer taking them home - trying to run away back home (students vs. society/government trying to strip them of their identity) - conflict not resolved--only intensified (punishment from trying to escape)--never will get home
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What metaphors does the poem use?
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Railroads/trains = lacerations and scars (cuts into natural landscape; white man's cutting into American Indian territory); for the kids : hope turning into pain/reality Green dresses = shame and uniformity; stripping of identity Spines of names of leaves = what's left of themselves (frail, skeleton)
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What metamorphosis does the poem describe at the end? Is it a positive or negative one?
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- a forced change of identity ("frail" and "spines" = they are less of what they once were) - disenchantment/negative change: being taught their native ways are "evil" and "wrong"--feeling shameful themselves and their heritage - "place" = home that they remember but it is fading
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What is the attitude of home expressed in the poem?
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place they want to escape back to/safe haven a memory that is fading
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Connection to the other works we have studies (family/heritage/memory)?
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- same culture/topic as "Phoenix" = poverty, losing heritage - "SB" = against one's will (Sonny to Isabel and children to boarding school) - la lucha : runaway to home (poem); "Hands,"; - fight to heal lacerations = "Scar," "Runaways" - losing heritage/tradition: Runaways, Father's Hands, "Digging" - disenchantment: Daddy, Sonny in SB,
