SOURCE: Waters, Richard K. Review of Jacklight. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 9, no. 4 (1985): 136-9.

In the following review of Jacklight, Waters comments on Erdrich's exploration of her mixed heritage through poetry.

In Jacklight Louise Erdrich has achieved something unusual in the field of Native American poetry, where all too often the voice of the poet too stridently insists that the reader give attention to the poet's Indian-ness. Not that it is wrong to be read as an Indian poet, but usually the poets of such works contradictorily beg to be read as poets in the mainstream, despite the inevitability that poems written about “bear” and “coyote” in an almost predictable style will be read as “Indian” poetry, whether the writer is Native American or Anglo. Erdrich, on the other hand, is a writer of mainstream poems concerned with real people in real situations, and while she does...