ENGLISH 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mica, Louise Erdrich, Mattress
16 Jan 2018
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Figures of hybridity and transformation: misshepeshu, our mothers warn us that we"ll think he"s handsome, for he appears with green eyes, copper skin, a mouth tender as a child"s. But if you fall into his arms, he sprouts horns, fangs, claws, fins. His feet are joined as one and his skin, brass scales, rings to the touch. He casts a shell necklace at your feet, weeps gleaming chips that harden into mica on your breasts. Then he takes the body of a lion or a fat brown worm. He"s a thing of dry foam, a thing of death by drowning, the death a chippewa cannot survive. (308: fleur, her cheeks were wide and flat, her hands large, chapped, muscular. Fleur"s shoulders were as broad as beams, her hips fishlike slippery, narrow. An old green dress clung to her waist, worn thin where she sat. She messed with evil, laughed at the old women"s advice, and dressed like a man.
