Reckonings: Love Stories in Contemporary Native American Literature

In what follows, R.Y. gives some insights on love stories in Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women.

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When reading love stories in contemporary Native American literature, we can’t help but notice the bluntness of the subject matter. In Reckonings, characters in stories like Anita Endrezze’s “Grandfather Sun Falls in Love with a Moon-Faced Woman” and Louise Erdrich’s “Le Mooz” are extremely straightforward about their emotions and passions. On the other hand, in our Western culture, we are not accustomed to having men approach us in bars asking to marry us, and we are not used to reading literature where sex is so explicitly described (unless, for example, the explicitness is satirical or the material is not meant to be read by adolescents).

At the end of Endrezze’s story, she includes a note, informing her audience that what they just read is an adaptation of a Yaqui myth (or possibly the story of her own grandfather). But it is, of course, a love story. At the beginning of the story, when the male protagonist “fell in love for the first time of this life,” I couldn’t help but be amazed at how quickly he realized he loved the female protagonist (197). [We can’t ignore how all of the characters, except for Rubio, remain unnamed in the story. When asked who he is, the male protagonist simply says, “‘I’m Yaqui,’” which is the name of his tribe (201). For this reason, I will refer to him as Sun (like they do in the story) and refer to the woman as Moon.] Anyway, even though Sun is drunk, somehow he knows all about her, how “she was his opposite in many ways” (197). He approaches her and asks, twice, if she will marry him. Although we have the concept of “love at first site” in Western literature, we still rarely hear of first encounters like this. And the girl plays along! This story may be a myth, but why do you think this Yaqui male has such courage to do this?

And further, what caught my attention was how Endrezze carefully writes, “he fell in love for the first time of this life.” What do you think she means when she says that he fell in love for the first time? Do you think it is possible to fall in love more than once? (These questions are applicable not only in Native American contexts, but they are relevant to everyone. I guess this is why literature brings people together.) But even though Sun does marry again, “to an ordinary, beautiful Yaqui woman…he never stopped mooning for her” (202). So although he has nothing bad to say about his wife, who is “a really good woman,” Moon is still the one he desires. So even though he does love his wife, maybe he really only did fall in love once.

Endrezze also included how “he fell in love for the first time of this life.” When I first read the story, I overlooked this part of the sentence, probably assuming she wrote “in his life.” But why do you think she wrote “this life?” Does this allude to the belief that people can be reborn or to the belief in an afterlife? Perhaps this is why the story ends with Sun dying, realizing the gift Moon would have accepted and believing his head is in her lap. It is also so heartwarming how love is “the gift that fits” (202). But I’m just a sucker for romance.

On a different note, Erdrich’s story is definitely not the conventional type of romance you’d expect in a love story. In most literature we have encountered in our high school English classes, such as prude Victorian novels or Shakespeare plays where the sexual content is hidden behind clever innuendos, the relationship between a couple is generally centered around their mutual affection for the other. But despite the harsh natures of the characters and the tense relationship Margaret and Nanapush share, “Le Mooz” is a love story, too. They express no affection for their spouse; instead, their love is cemented through sex. They deliberately contradict each other, and “they rarely collaborated on any task” (213). They simply enjoy opposing each other and making the other angry; in fact, Nanapush “was delighted with her anger, for when she lost control like this during the day she often lost control once the sun went down also, and he was already anticipating their pleasure” (215).

Erdrich’s blunt references to lovemaking can be quite a shock for readers unused to this kind of explicitness. The descriptions of the two moose going at it were especially unexpected; Erdrich describes the boat as it “tipped up and the bull moose in the extremity of his passion loved the female moose with ponderous mountings and thrilling thrusts that swung Nanapush from side to side” (217). Why do you think there are such blatant references to sexual activity in Erdrich’s work? This may be this author’s personal preference to include such explicitness, but as we saw in Endrezze’s story, Native American writers do not hold back in describing the passions of their characters. In addition, both Nanapush and Margaret definitely do not restrain from expressing their annoyance, anger, and frustration with each other. So either way, emotion is a prevalent matter in Native American literature.

We can also detect a comic tone in the narration, even during the most sorrowful parts of the story. At Nanapush’s funeral, as his loved ones grieved, “in the depth of their sorrow, just at the hour when they felt the loss of Nanapush most keenly,” he farted and came back to life. And after he greeted all of the mourners, once he reached Margaret, he said, “‘No matter how I love you…I would rather go to the spirit world than stay here and eat your cooking!’” (220) At that, he fell back dead again. Basically, he came back to life twice, much to the unspoken annoyance of the confused mourners. In no funeral I have ever heard described had there been such a wide range of emotions. I’m sure some readers would take offense if this ever happened to them personally, to have the graveness of such an event not be taken seriously.

But, in the end, “between the confusion, the grief, the exhaustion and bewilderment,” the true nature of the story comes forth. Nanapush and Margaret make love for the last time in “the finest and most elegantly accomplished hours that perhaps lovers ever spent on earth” (221). I bet the words “fine” and “elegant” would not be the first words that come to mind when thinking of sex, but the intimacy of these characters prove that there would have been no better way to spend Nanapush’s last hours. (Sometimes I wish society today could focus on these aspects of sex and intimacy.)

At the end of Erdrich’s story, the explicitness of her characters’ relationship adds up to a conclusion that all readers could relate to. While Margaret would leave Nanapush “a plate of ill-cooked beans because she missed his complaints,” “more often she cooked his favorites…pampered and pitied him the way she hadn’t dared in life for fear he’d get the better of her” (221). In the end, once he is gone, she realizes this fear should not have mattered. So despite the strange bluntness of this story that may have caught the readers off guard, in the end, we realize that Nanapush and Margaret were very much in love.

Although the blunt and explicit presentations of emotion in Native American love stories are unlike what Western cultures are typically used to reading, we must recognize that different as they are, the love described is universal.

R.Y.