Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"
    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"
    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"
    Ebook53 pages37 minutes

    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMay 2, 2016
    ISBN9781535827713
    A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Q&A With Danielle Evans, Author Of ‘The Office Of Historical Corrections’

      Jan 12, 2021

      “In my stories, I explore that space between what we think and what we say out loud, between what we actually want and how we behave,” says Ms. Evans.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Man Who Listens To Horses

      May 26, 2022

      The Queen has been an advocate of Monty Roberts’ natural horsemanship since she invited him to Windsor Castle to demonstrate his training methods in 1989, in the days when many of her connections were extremely sceptical. The monarch, however, was an

      1 min read

    • Article

      My Past And Future Assassin

      Jun 13, 2018

      My Past And Future Assassin
      16 min read

    • Article

      That Changed My Life

      Mar 15, 2022

      The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde My adoration of Oscar Wilde was a gift from my father who introduced me to the novels and plays. The original film of The Importance of Being Earnest was a firm favourite and, when I was 16, my father to

      1 min read

    • Article

      Recent Winners

      Dec 12, 2018

      CARLOS ANDRÉS GÓMEZ Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS Backwaters Press Backwaters Prize BEVERLY BURCH BkMk Press John Ciardi Prize for Poetry WALLACE STEVENS AWARD Sonia Sanchez of Philadelphia won the 2018 Wallace

      25 min read

    • Article

      Colson Whitehead

      Aug 13, 2016

      The author of The Underground Railroad, Oprah’s new book-club pick, talks about making fiction from history’s great atrocity

      2 min read

    • Article

      Telling Toni Morrison’s Story: The Millions Interviews Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

      Jun 26, 2019

      ‘The Pieces I Am’ presents Toni as the person that I know. Audiences will see her as the brilliant, strong woman she is. They will love her more than ever. The post Telling Toni Morrison’s Story: The Millions Interviews Timothy Greenfield-Sanders app

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Violent Truths of ‘Brutalities’

      Feb 2, 2024

      The impulse to simplify the complicated nature of touch, argues Margo Steines, is not just an intellectual but an ethical failure. The post The Violent Truths of ‘Brutalities’ appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Literary Agents of Change

      Aug 18, 2021

      While recent conversations about the lack of diversity in publishing have centered on the need to release more diverse books and hire more people of color within publishing houses, less mention has been made of a key set of gatekeepers to the industr

      3 min read

    • Article

      Cosmic Puzzle-pieces Come Together In Masterly ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’

      Sep 28, 2021

      Anthony Doerr, author of “All the Light We Cannot See,” plots a tale that soars across centuries in “Cloud Cuckoo Land.”

      2 min read

    • Article

      Mary Oliver Looked 'Past Reason, Past The Provable'

      Jan 18, 2019

      The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist wrote lyrically about nature, but there's more to her work than meets the eye.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Working Class Heroine

      Jun 1, 2018

      The Pakistani model and social media star Qandeel Baloch was murdered by her younger brother nearly two years ago, a so-called 'honour killing' that transformed the victim from a guilty pleasure for the tens of thousands that watched her gauche, almo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Tireless Champion

      Nov 1, 2020

      African American activist and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper used the spoken and written word to champion racial equality. And she was active at a time when women and African Americans were not equal citizens in the United States. Born in 1825,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Heartland Heroine

      Jun 18, 2019

      Heartland Heroine
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hell On Earth

      Apr 9, 2020

      Hell On Earth
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Anjali Enjeti

      Dec 2, 2021

      If the pandemic had a theme, it would be that time is slippery, that our memories serve as life jackets in an uncertain world, and that our letters to others are really letters to our lonely, broken selves. The post A Year in Reading: Anjali Enjeti a

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tale of Two Handmaids

      Dec 28, 2018

      A Tale of Two Handmaids
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A study guide for Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen" - Gale

      11

      The Beet Queen

      Louise Erdrich

      1986

      Introduction

      Louise Erdrich's novel The Beet Queen, first published in 1986, features a sweeping plot told from multiple viewpoints over many decades. Set in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, beginning in 1932, the story involves the interconnected lives of Mary Adare, her brother Karl, her cousin Sita, the half-Chippewa Celestine James, and Celestine's daughter Dot, who ultimately becomes the Beet Queen of the title in the 1970s. Argus, the nearby Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation, and its sprawling multigenerational families are featured in many of Erdrich's other works, including Love Medicine (1984), a novelistic collection of interrelated stories; Tracks (1988), a novel focusing on the lives of the Chippewa from 1912 to 1924; The Bingo Palace (1994); and Tales of Burning Love (1996). All the works stand on their own and focus on specific characters but feature a certain amount of the sort of interrelational overlap common to rural communities. The Beet Queen depicts nontraditional interpretations of family prompted by Mary and Karl's dramatic abandonment by their destitute mother. While the novel dwells less on Native American themes than many of Erdrich's other works, critics have admired its evocative language and rich use of symbolism.

      Author Biography

      Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on June 7, 1954, to a Chippewa mother and a German American father. She grew up in North Dakota as a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, where her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. (The Chippewa are also called the Ojibwa or Ojibwe.) Erdrich graduated from Dartmouth College in 1976 and received her master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. She found success as a writer shortly thereafter; her story The World's Greatest Fisherman won the prestigious Nelson Algren Prize for short fiction in 1982. Another story, Fleur, first published in Esquire magazine in 1986—concerning the character of Fleur Pillager, who also appears in The Beet Queen—received the O. Henry Award in 1987. Love Medicine, her first novel, met with resounding success, garnering an American Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors.

      Erdrich first met her future husband, the writer and anthropologist Michael Dorris, while she was an undergraduate at Dartmouth and he was a professor. In 1981, following a long-distance courtship, the couple married and began collaborating on fiction. Dorris contributed much input to Erdrich's early published works, but they did not share joint authorship until the publication of The Crown of Columbus in 1991, a novel about a Navajo academic and her exasperating colleague, who are both researching Christopher Columbus and have vastly divergent opinions on his legacy.

      Erdrich and Dorris had three children together and also raised three children adopted by Dorris before they were married. One adopted son suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, a common affliction in Native American communities, which prompted Dorris to publish The Broken Cord: A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in 1989, for which Erdrich wrote the preface. Dorris struggled with depression for much of their marriage, which was compounded by the death of another of their sons in 1991. A third son accused Dorris of child abuse and Erdrich of negligent complicity in 1995. The couple later divorced, and in 1997, Dorris committed suicide.

      Erdrich has continued to publish well-received novels, including The Antelope Wife (1998), a World Fantasy Award winner, as well

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1