Mothering and Othering

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         Labeling things can sometimes be a good thing, such as warnings on chemicals or expiration dates on food cans. However, labeling living organisms, both human and nonhuman, crosses the line and creates ethical and envirnmental problems. Louise Erdrich presents this idea of othering taking place between humans and nonhuman species. In Erdrich’s dystopic, epistolary novel titled Future Home of the Living God, she explores a near-future in which all living creatures seemingly begin to devolve. Family, mothering, and the non-human world all contribute to understanding a way forward for humanity. In Home of the Living God, Erdrich illustrates the ways “othering” is used in regards to the social and nonhuman worlds as well as argues how binary thinking causes problems to both society and the environment. 

          Over the course of the novel, Cedar explores her identity and her relation to different familial structures in her life. Her journey begins when she sets off to find her birth parents and uses the opening pages to describe her identity. Labeling her adoptive family as “Minneapolis liberals” who gave her the name “Cedar Hawk Songmaker” despite being born ‘Mary Potts’ (Erdrich 3). Her parents have inadvertently forced her to fill this mental idea of what a native american girl should be called. Growing up, she describes her experience with her white, adopted family, who “kept [her] hair in braids” and believed she “supposedly had a hotline to nature” (Erdrich 5). The binary need to label and perpetuate stereotypes regarding Native Americans and their culture, have reared their ugly head. Cedar is left feeling like she does not belong, practicing a culture that she believes she is meant to know all about and yet does not. She describes herself as “a woman, a dweeb, a geek, a pregnant, [...] insecure Ojibwe, [and] a fledgling Catholic” (Erdrich 66). While a lot of people around her label her as Ojibwe, she sees herself in terms of more than just her race. Everyone is quick to see her as different, as “other” while she sees herself as a woman and as a Catholic. However, the binary conformity that comes with thinking of oneself in terms of broad labels instead of by name is just as important to understand and break down. She is simultaneously all that she has described and yet none. 

          When Cedar meets her biological family, she adheres to a mental construction and seperation of not only who her family is, but in what ways they are allowed to interact and relate to her. She has parts of her that resemble her adoptive family and others that tie her to her biological one, and yet still other relationships that tie her to those not considered traditional family. Even though she hates to admit it, Cedar’s stubbornness and need for control is similar to her adoptive mother Sera’s “truth” (Erdrich 198). Cedar spends much of the earlier journal entries describing the stage of life her child is at in development. At one point, she describes the fetus’ “bones [...] hardening, [its] brain is hooked up to stereo” as his hearing and ears develop (Erdrich 63). While she lives with her adoptive family, she sees herself as different, partially due to her parents. But when she is away from them, she needs to realize that her identity is still reflective of her adoptive parents and the environment and home they provided to her.

           Cedar’s connection to Eddy is central in breaking the binary thinking that the rest of the novel’s characters seem to be stuck in. His words of encouragement lie at the heart of the novel. He is described as bipolar and spends his time as chief of the colony and also writes a novel of his own. The novel consists of thousands of pages as reasons not to commit suicide. Eddy’s only connection to Cedar is she is the biological daughter of the woman he is married to, and yet, the bond and love he has for Cedar is beautiful. He immediately wants to connect with her and goes so far as to tell her “‘I know today’s reason I’m alive’” is because of her (Erdrich 32). Many situations of step-parent/stepchild are fueled with anger or jealousy, but Eddy creates a bond of safety and trust with Cedar. When she confides in him, he actively listens, and she “throw[s her]self at him, hug[s] him, and he hugs [her] back” (Erdrich 239). Eddy, who had no role in her life before, becomes a pinnacle of hope and love and grows closer to Cedar. This conflicts with what the traditional family structure is meant to look like, specifically in regards to Glen, her adoptive and biological father. Glen disappears after the first pages of the novel despite Cedar’s revelation that he has been her biological father all along. Glen is not the father she needs, despite being both the traditional and less traditional but socially acceptable father. Instead, Cedar creates her family. At one point near the end of the novel, Sera and Cedar hide away with Cedar’s biological family on the reservation. Her family structures merge and Eddy reemphasizes the importance of breaking down social structures and binary thinking in terms of both family and identity. It’s with this progressive thinking towards social and human interaction that is needed and must then be transferred to the non-human. 

          The progress towards nonbinary thinking in regards to the way she perceives herself, nature, and her child is what the future needs. The descriptions of the dystopic world are haunting, and yet, from Cedar’s perspective, there is a sense of beauty and wonder to it as well. Cedar’s thinking directly opposes those who are in charge. Despite the world changing rapidly, Cedar believes “this is creation’s love of creation” and when she encounters what the creatures labeled ‘devolved’ by the world, she finds herself in awe (Erdrich 54). A bird swooping through the trees was “a graceful thing with fluid, darting movement” which captivated her attention (Erdrich 92). It’s precisely this wonderment at the new world and the rejection of society’s description of these creatures, that creates hope at the end of the novel. Early on, “[she realizes] this: [she is] not at the end of things, but the beginning” (Erdrich 92). While the world sees this as a process of devolution, the world moving backwards, Cedar believes it’s merely the world marching forward to create something new. Cedar’s perspective and the inherent connection and reverence she has formed with the evolving creatures is inspiring and necessary if the human world is going to be able to adapt and move forward. 

          Perspective and belief directly influences reality as seen with Cedar’s conflicting identities and her early turmoil in her attempts to fit the idea of a Native American. Already, society was rejecting those with different skin colors and cultures. Already, humans were treating other human beings as others and less thans, so when these “devolved” species of human beings emerge, it only makes sense that they too would be labeled and rejected, much like Cedar. As the world erupts into chaos, the government has begun to harvest frozen eggs to fertilize and implant in ‘womb volunteers’; however, “the embryos not labeled caucasian” are left or possibly destroyed; furthermore, because her baby’s father is white, she is more valuable (Erdrich 90). Several issues become apparent when this news reaches Cedar. Firstly, the labeling and othering of other races is now taking place on a wildly different scale. Fears are being instilled in the public of both babies and mothers of color. The government believes and is distilling this belief that people of color are the possible cause of the change in human species, which is why they reject the embryos and value the caucasian children. It’s the complete disregard for possible life when it does not fit into their perceived ideal specimen that strongly illustrates the hypocrisy and racism at the root of those in power. 

            The facilities where Cedar finds herself at in the middle and end of the book further illustrate the separation between the present and future. These centers, typically abandoned hospitals or jails converted to Womb Volunteer Facilities, trap and heavily drug pregnant women. Eventually, this evolves into imprisoning viable women, “any mistake and [they] end up” at the facility where they are artificially inseminated (Erdrich 252). At these centers, Cedar learns that many of the patients, both child and mother, die on the operating table, their immune systems compromised because of the altered beings. If both somehow survive, the baby is taken to be studied and the mother reinseminated, forced to produce another until she is of no more use. It’s the separation, the reduction of these babies as either normal or not and the reduction of women to their specific ability to bear children. Furthermore, the government has created a system in which children are no longer being nurtured or cared for, a tie is severed between mother and child, and yet, through Cedar’s journal, she is able to bridge that gap being created. Throughout the novel, Cedar is given several reasons to resent her child and/or her ability to be a mother, and yet, she holds onto hope. She forms a bond with the unborn child, amazed at the child’s growth over the course of her pregnancy and her final message, in hopes that he will someday discover her journal to him, wonders “where will [he] be, [her] darling, the last time it snows on earth” (Erdrich 267). The snow is symbolic of her childhood innocence. She describes a time when the earth went through a change and was able to survive, and similarly, the earth will survive this change as well. The novel, written in the form of journal entries to her child, has served as yet another form of control for Cedar over her narrative. Control over her view of the world and whether or not she dies at the end of the novel does not matter, because she is passing on her freedom and her world to the future generation, whether he is considered devolved or normal or somewhere in between. The end of the novel, rather than signifying the end of something, indicates the start of what she believes is a new world. 

             Erdrich’s belief in spoken binaries in relation to human and nonhuman illustrate the need for society to break free from the labels in order to continue to evolve as a society, as highlighted in her novel Future Home of the Living God. Spoken binaries confine individuals and reduce them to merely a token of their identity. Instead, identity is about the creation of both individuality and the world one chooses to surround oneself with. Family is more than blood, it is a bond of trust, care, and acceptance, which contributes to Cedar’s identity. The only way forward is by breaking out of the need to sort and label, including humans, and instead view all life as an interconnected web of individual species seeking a better world. 

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Work Cited

Erdrich, Louise. Future Home of the Living God: A Novel. Harper Perennial, 2020