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Cargando... The Night Watchman (2020)por Louise Erdrich
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Such good writing, and I like learning about native people, about which I know almost nothing. ( ) In the early 1950s, news of a new "emancipation" bill from the US Congress reaches Thomas Wazhashk, a Chippewa council member and resident of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. The bill threatens to terminate the rights, identity, and sheer existence, of Thomas's Native American reservation community. Louise Erdrich, the author, models Thomas on the life of her grandfather who fought against the termination of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in the same era. Thomas is the night watchman, or security guard, for a relatively new jewel-bearing plant near the reservation. Patrice Paranteau is recent high school graduate working at the jewel-bearing plant to support her mother and younger brother. While Thomas fights for the existence of their Native American community, Patrice journeys to save her sister, Vera, who disappeared after moving to Minneapolis. Meanwhile, a cast of characters in the reservation community explore themes of love, family and exploitation, and bring subtle humor to the story. Following Thomas and Patrice's stories was a delightful treat. This book shares a story that needed to be told, and the beauty of Erdrich's prose, along with her deep research and understanding of the topic, do the story justice. This novel is packed full of characters--Wood Mountain, Juggie, Valentine, Barnes, and more--capturing the far-reaching but study definition of family in the reservation community. The prose captures beautiful dream sequences and reservation lore--in particular, the muskrat story will stick with me--that deepen the story. Yet, in the end, The Night Watchman left me wanting more. I wished for more of Vera's story, which felt cut abruptly short. I wished for a deeper exploration of Millie and Rose and Zhanaat. Erdrich has begun to develop fascinating characters, and I wish to see them develop even more. This is my first Louise Erdrich novel, and I look forward to reading many more.
Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman is a singular achievement even for this accomplished writer. ... Erdrich, like her grandfather, is a defender and raconteur of the lives of her people. Her intimate knowledge of the Native American world in collision with the white world has allowed her, over more than a dozen books, to create a brilliantly realized alternate history as rich as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. The Night Watchman arrives in the midst of an impassioned debate over how American citizenship should be defined. As the author writes in an afterword: “If you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.” Louise Erdrich is one of our era’s most powerful literary voices. Whether writing of love, enmity, or ambition, her descriptions feel resonant, yet arresting in their originality. Her portraits of reservation life in the northern Midwest also make her one of this generation’s most important Native American writers. Erdrich’s fictional communities are characterized by intense and ambivalent relationships – of lovers, rivals, and mothers and daughters. Rather than centering on an individual or a single family, she creates networks of families, emphasizing their interrelatedness, their shared past, and the land they inhabit, building a compelling alternative world – one that is always under siege. ... We need more of these stories that recount collective resistance and the small victories that can accompany it, while also recognizing the toll they take (economically, physically, emotionally) on individuals and communities. There’s a need, too, to be more honest about the way our country’s policies have negatively affected generations of Native Americans. “The Night Watchman” may be set in the 1950s, but the history it unearths and its themes of taking a stand against injustice are every bit as timely today. The Night Watchman is indeed historical, thoroughly researched, rich with cultural and topical detail. However, what engages the reader most deeply are Erdrich’s characters: people, ghosts, even animals. As for the human cast, some of them are directly involved in responding to the legislative threat; others just live their complicated, difficult lives. ... Both the story of the tribe and the story of the individual family plumb grim history and circumstances, but the novel is neither grim nor a lament. Rather, it is a tale of resistance, courage, and love prevailing against the odds. Some readers may question such optimism and hope and doubt the tentative, nuanced resolutions achieved by the tribe and Thomas’ family. But any reader in this present, dark winter of 2020 open to reminders of what a few good people can do will find The Night Watchman bracing and timely. The author ... delivers a magisterial epic that brings her power of witness to every page. High drama, low comedy, ghost stories, mystical visions, family and tribal lore — wed to a surprising outbreak of enthusiasm for boxing matches — mix with political fervor and a terrifying undercurrent of predation and violence against women. For 450 pages, we are grateful to be allowed into this world. ... In this era of modern termination assailing us, the book feels like a call to arms. A call to humanity. A banquet prepared for us by hungry people. Erdrich ends the book, in the afterword’s closing, with a kind of blessing: “If you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change … let this book give you heart.” ... modern realism and Native spirituality mingle harmoniously in Erdrich’s pages without calling either into question. ... This tapestry of stories is a signature of Erdrich’s literary craft, but she does it so beautifully that it’s tempting to forget how remarkable it is. Chapter by chapter, we encounter characters interrelated but traveling along their own paths. ... Expecting to follow the linear trajectory of a mystery, we discover in Erdrich’s fiction something more organic, more humane. Like her characters, we find ourselves “laughing in that desperate high-pitched way people laugh when their hearts are broken.” PremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
PREMIO PULITZER DE FICCIN 2021 Al igual que esos antepasados que habitan siempre en las sombras de sus novelas, los personajes que Louise Erdrich ha creado en El vigilante nocturno acompaarn al lector mucho despus de haber terminado el libro. New York Journal of Books 1953, Dakota del Norte. Thomas Wazhashk es el vigilante nocturno de la primera fbrica inaugurada cerca de la reserva india de Turtle Mountain. Tambin es un prominente miembro del Consejo Chippewa, desconcertado por un nuevo proyecto de ley que pronto se presentar ante el Congreso. El Gobierno de los Estados Unidos califica la medida como una emancipacin, pero ms bien parece restringir an ms la libertad y los derechos de los nativos americanos sobre su tierra, sobre la base de su identidad. Thomas, indignado por esa nueva traicin a su pueblo y aunque tenga que enfrentarse a todo Washington D. C., har lo imposible por combatirla. Por otro lado, y a diferencia de la mayora de las chicas de la comunidad, Pixie Paranteau no piensa cargar de ninguna manera con un marido y montones de hijos. Bastante tiene ya con su trabajo en la fbrica, ganando apenas lo suficiente para mantener a su madre y a su hermano, por no hablar de su padre, quien solo aparece cuando necesita dinero para seguir bebiendo. Adems, Pixie necesita ahorrar cada centavo para llegar a Minnesota y encontrar a Vera, su hermana perdida. Basada en la extraordinaria vida de su abuelo, Louise Erdrich nos entrega en El vigilante nocturno una de sus mejores novelas, una historia de generaciones pasadas y futuras, de preservacin y progreso, en la que colisionan los peores y los mejores impulsos de la naturaleza humana, iluminando as las vidas y sueos de todos sus personajes. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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