Louise Erdrich, Native American writer: 'No one is illegal; we all have the same right to exist'

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-04-19/louise-erdrich-native-american-writer-no-one-is-illegal-we-all-have-the-same-right-to-exist.html

Louise Erdrich, Native American writer: ‘No one is illegal; we all have the same right to exist’

One of America’s most admired novelists, she owns a bookstore in the heart of the Minneapolis protests against Trump. In 2024, she published ‘The Mighty Red’

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Minneapolis - APR 19, 2026 - 00:00 EDT
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Birchbark Books in Minneapolis is one of those wonderful bookstores across the United States that ask their employees to recommend titles. The difference is that, at Birchbark, one of the recommenders — who signs her slips of paper as “Louise” — is more than just a reader with good taste. “Louise” is actually Louise Erdrich, 71, a leading voice in Native American literature and one of the most admired writers in the country.

On a recent visit to the bookstore, Erdrich’s picks included a story about the 2016 Standing Rock uprising against the construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota (it didn’t stop the pipeline, but it did spark a generational awakening) and Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025). “What Desai does in that novel isn’t easy,” Erdrich points out.

The Minnesota-born novelist belongs to the club of writers — from Saul Bellow, to Colson Whitehead, to John Updike — who have won both of America’s top literary prizes: the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. In her case, she won the first for The Night Watchman (2020) and the latter for The Round House (2012).

In one corner of her bookstore, which also sells crafts and jewelry from Indigenous communities, there’s a wall displaying those two award-winning titles and the rest of her works, including The Mighty Red (2024), her latest novel.

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