LaRose

by Louise Erdrich

Exterminate or educate.

Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life. Or was it the other way around?

When you could see one world from the other world, the world for instance of the living from the world of the dead, there was a certain comfort.

Girls were not named for flowers, as flowers died so quickly. Girls were named for deathless things—forms of light, forms of clouds, shapes of stars, that which appears and disappears like an island on the horizon.

In English there was a word for every object. In Ojibwe there was a word for every action.

English had more shades of personal emotion, but Ojibwe had more shades of family relationships.

That’s called intergenerational trauma, my boy. It isn’t our fault they keep us down; they savaged our culture, family structure, and most of all we need our land back.

it was no use, white people covered the earth like lice.

We are chased into this life. The Catholics think we are chased by devils, original sin. We are chased by things done to us in this life.

We are chased by what we do to others and then in turn what they do to us. We’re always looking behind us, or worried about what comes next.