Reimagining the Frontier in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

This paper interprets Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks in light of Louis Owens’ frontier theory. According to Owens, the concept of the frontier encompasses not just the physical terrain but also the psychological and cognitive aspects of the colonial encounter. It is a dangerously unstable, indeterminate and hybridized space that refuses to be confined through boundaries and serves as a dynamic zone of resistance. Utilizing the conventions of magical realism and the grotesque, Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) creates such a frontier zone in which the discourse of hegemony is estranged, and power relations reworked and reversed