A Voice No Longer Ignored : Louise Erdrich’s success helped ensure that Native American fiction became a flourishing genre. But she says publishers still have much to learn.

When Louise Erdrich sent drafts of her first novel to publishers in 1983, the response was uniformly discouraging. Most upsetting were rejection notes that said: “People don’t want to read about Indians.”

The young author of “Love Medicine,” who is French-Chippewa on her mother’s side, grew discouraged. Would her book ever be published?

Enter the husband: Author Michael Dorris dummied up some stationery, passed himself off as a savvy literary agent and got Holt, Rinehart and Winston to buy “Love Medicine” for a $5,000 advance. Fueled by word of mouth in small bookstores, Erdrich’s richly evocative novel of Native American life won the National Book Critics Circle Award and sold more than 400,000 copies.

The storybook reversal has become legend in the New York publishing world, a reminder that booksellers ignore ethnic voices at their peril. It also established Erdrich as a leading writer of American fiction.

“This was all kind of bizarre,” says Erdrich, 39, who worked on highway construction crews, changed bedsheets in mental hospitals and poured coffee in diners before finally making it as an author. “But it all worked out for the best, because I don’t like bosses or authority. I can’t stand people telling me what to do. Really, I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”

Neither can a growing army of readers, who snapped up copies of Erdrich’s succeeding novels, “The Beet Queen” and “Tracks.” Blending gritty snapshots of reality with a surging, almost poetic style, the books turned North Dakota reservations into a self-contained fictional world rivaling William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi.

The magic continues in “The Bingo Palace” (HarperCollins), Erdrich’s latest installment in her cycle of Native American novels. Ten years after her career took off, she’s raising three daughters and pursuing a host of projects--including a fifth novel and a collection of essays--even as she starts a long national tour to promote the new book.

Today, Native American fiction is a flourishing genre. But as Erdrich finishes a brisk walk in Central Park, she says the book world still has much to learn.

*

Question: How much has publishing changed its attitudes toward Native American writers since “Love Medicine?”

Answer: There’s increased sophistication. Enough has been written now that most publishers are aware that Native Americans aren’t based only on the plains or only in one tribal setting. And B-movie portrayals aren’t acceptable. But one thing that has to change is the mentality that says, there can only be so many books about Native Americans. . . . I’ve heard Native American writers worry about that. And there’s room for fine writing, no matter who writes it.

*

Q: Have the barriers you faced as an unknown novelist lessened any?

A: There’s been a great shift in how books are sold, and many independent bookstores are in danger of going out of business. I have to lament that because I distinctly owe the first sales of “Love Medicine” to word of mouth from independent booksellers. They were the ones who would pick it up and hand it to readers who came in. With the big chain stores, I fear that might be lost. You have few of those individual moments with customers in a huge store.

*

Q: Has U.S. culture become more realistic about Native American life or is it mired in the same old cliches?

A: It’s hard to tell. I was watching the movie “Geronimo” on television . . . and it told the story differently than they might have before. This was an all-native cast. You wouldn’t have seen this 10 years ago. There’s more sympathy (for Native Americans), but at the same time, you can still come across the most backward attitudes and outright hatred.

*

Q: How do you react to the positive images of Native Americans in films like “Dances with Wolves?” Is that an encouraging sign?

A: There’s a sense of romance that permeates some views of native life. A kind of New Ageism . . . an idealized, Pan-Indian embrace of a kind of mother earth thinking. It’s painful to see sometimes, because there’s such a deep need for a spiritual connection, an American connection to the landscape. Unfortunately, people think they can just step into a culture . . . and I don’t think we can step into each other’s skin and bones. The real answer is a self-examination that’s harder to do and harder to admit.

*

In “The Bingo Palace,” Erdrich probes themes of Native American identity and self-examination to an excruciating degree. As in previous books, her characters are torn between the lure of life off the reservations and a spiritually powerful urge to return and make things right with one’s family.

Lipsha Morrissey, a leading character, is drawn back to the reservation by his grandmother’s command, and he promptly falls in love with a woman who proves frustratingly elusive. The drama plays out against the growth of bingo and casino gambling, a real-life trend that has transformed Native American life.

Erdrich wrote many sections of the new novel in the early 1980s, anticipating with her imagination today’s new world of reservation gambling. Although she concedes that Native Americans have a legal right to build these palaces of chance, her book is studded with menacing warnings. At one point, a character dismisses one bingo facility as a “half-cylinder of false hope,” a shabby roadhouse of greed where the human spirit dies.

*

Q: Is the growth of reservation gambling a blessing or a curse?

A: Depending on whom you speak to, it’s either the greatest thing that’s ever happened to Native Americans or the worst. Some reservations are handling it with more ease and grace, while others have been devastated.

*

Q: What are the problems you’ve seen developing?

A: There are too many casinos opening up. They’re too big. Too much all at once. I have cousins who are now blackjack dealers and (gambling) is very much part of life. Most of the casinos are run by Las Vegas or Reno companies (that) approach native tribal councils and target their reservations for a casino. On the other hand, the money has been a lifesaver for many reservations. In Minnesota, the Mille-Lacs Chippewa have used it to open up day care, put roads and schools in, and provide health care.

*

Q: In “The Bingo Palace,” your main character is drawn back to the reservation and gambling keeps him there. Then he flees, with disastrous results. How do you resolve this theme of Native Americans between two worlds?

A: I don’t believe that you can’t go home again. I think you keep going home and trying to figure it out and you never do. That’s what he keeps doing. Every time he goes home it’s a different story, and there’s more insight. But then weakness sets in. He’s someone who never does lose that little shred of hope that at least he’ll understand more.

*

It’s hard enough solving these problems when you’re a Native American, coping with the burdens of racism and economic deprivation. Erdrich’s French-German-Chippewa roots make life an even more tangled riddle.

Raised in Wahpeton, N.D., Erdrich was born the eldest of seven children. Her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, and her maternal grandfather was the tribal chairman on the Turtle Mountain Reservation. She learned the traditional Chippewa religion but was also raised Catholic, a duality that became a theme in her life.

Indeed, it was only after attending Dartmouth that Erdrich paid special attention to her Native American roots. It was there she met Dorris, who was born into the Modoc tribe and who founded the school’s Native American studies program. Erdrich won prizes for short stories and supported herself with odd jobs before finally gaining financial security with “Love Medicine.”

The Wall Street Journal has dubbed her “The High Priestess of Native American Lit.” But Erdrich is unusually blunt about her identity.

*

Q: Some critics speculate that you’re a Native American who happens to be a writer. Others say it’s the other way around. Which is more accurate?

A: I don’t always feel comfortable being labeled, because I’m such a mixture of backgrounds. I’ve lived in the West, so I can walk into the most hard-bitten cafe and sit down with ranchers. I can walk into a powwow and feel comfortable. I feel happy in the Frankfurt airport, because I can understand the things that people say in German, and I like to be around people speaking French. There’s a place for me to touch down in all these cultures.

*

Q: Given such diversity, you’re attuned to things others miss. You’ve shown a humorous side to Native American life, and that surprises many readers. Why?

A: It’s hard to explain why life is funny when it’s so sad at the same time. That’s one of the things that can amaze people. I know very few people who have native backgrounds who don’t start laughing at some point, and I guess it’s a form of survival, a way of dealing with hardship.

*

Q: Why do so few people outside the culture pick up on this?

A: They don’t see it. I’m often in a setting where I’ll be with someone who’s just come from a reservation and they’ll say, “Oh, it was dreadful.” They’re just staggering with the sadness of it all. And then I’ll be back with people on that same reservation and they’re laughing, with tears in their eyes, at the people who just staggered through. Now, sure, the life there is painful. It’s certainly a plight. But humor is part of that same world.

*

Q: What does this say about human communication?

A: That it’s surreal. People pass each other in this world and they do not see each other. They don’t look each other in the eye.