Regaining the Past and Claiming the Future: Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" and Louise Erdrich's "Tracks"

Abstract

In this paper, I will focus on the works of the prominent contemporary African-American writer Toni Morrison and the prominent contemporary Native-American writer Louise Erdrlch as regaining what their peoples have lost in their relations with white European settlers in the "New World." Morrison engages in what she terms the process of "re-memory" in order to reconstruct the past of the African-American in the New World. The past that she reconstructs provides a past that can foster pride in African-Americans and that they can claim as their own. Erdrich does not specifically address the topic of loss or regaining in connection to her novels; however, she, and her husband Michael Dorris, are both highly involved in political work for Native-Americans to regain lost tribal and treaty land.