SOURCE: "Blurs, Blends, Berdaches: Gender Mixing in the Novels of Louise Erdrich," in Studies in American Indian Literatures, Vol. 8, No. 3, Fall 1996, pp. 49-62.

In the following essay, Barak discusses Erdrich's use of gender mixing in the Indian tradition of the figures of the berdache and the trickster.

      We have come to the edge of the woods,
      out of brown grass where we slept, unseen,
      out of leaves creaked shut, out of our hiding.
      We have come here too long.
 
      It is their turn now,
      their turn to follow us. Listen,
      they put down their equipment.
      It is useless in the tall brush.
      And now they take the first steps, not knowing
      how deep the woods are and lightless,
      How deep the woods are.
 
                                 Erdrich, "Jacklight"

In an interview with Jan George shortly after the publication of her first book of poems, Jacklight, Louise Erdrich comments on the title...