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King Kashpaw
Zelda’s daughter, Marie and Nector’s granddaughter, and cousin to Lipsha and King. Albertine first hears about her Aunt June’s death weeks after she was buried. Albertine is away from the reservation studying nursing, and her mother didn’t think Albertine had time to attend the funeral because of the demands of her schooling. Albertine and Zelda have a strained relationship, and even though Albertine has no desire to see her mother, she decides to go home to the reservation. At her family’s home, Albertine’s female relatives burden her with numerous domestic chores, and Zelda makes snide comments about Albertine’s aversion to marriage and her desire to be a “career girl.” Albertine resents the narrowly defined role of women within her Native American culture, and she rejects the gendered role that is forced upon her. Albertine is independent and outspoken, and she even quits nursing school to study medicine, since being a nurse is “not enough for her.” Like the cooking and laundry her mother and grandmother expect of her, Albertine sees nursing as a traditionally female role, so she rejects it in lieu of becoming a doctor, a profession that has long been dominated by men. Albertine’s character serves to upend popular gender stereotypes, such as women being dependent and incompetent, and underscores Erdrich’s argument that women are just as capable as men.
Albertine Johnson Quotes in Love Medicine
The Love Medicine quotes below are all either spoken by Albertine Johnson or refer to Albertine Johnson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The World’s Greatest Fisherman Part 2
Quotes
Far from home, living in a white woman’s basement, that letter made me feel buried, too. I opened the envelope and read the words. I was sitting at my linoleum table with my textbook spread out to the section on “Patient Abuse.” There were two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.
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She had let the government put Nector in school but hidden Eli, the one she couldn’t part with, in the root cellar dug beneath her floor. In that way she gained a son on either side of the line. Nector came home from boarding school knowing white reading and writing, while Eli knew the woods. Now, these many years later, hard to tell why or how, my great-uncle Eli was still sharp, while Grandpa’s mind had left us, gone wary and wild.
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Albertine Johnson Quotes in Love Medicine
The Love Medicine quotes below are all either spoken by Albertine Johnson or refer to Albertine Johnson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The World’s Greatest Fisherman Part 2
Quotes
Far from home, living in a white woman’s basement, that letter made me feel buried, too. I opened the envelope and read the words. I was sitting at my linoleum table with my textbook spread out to the section on “Patient Abuse.” There were two ways you could think of that title. One was obvious to a nursing student, and the other was obvious to a Kashpaw. Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
She had let the government put Nector in school but hidden Eli, the one she couldn’t part with, in the root cellar dug beneath her floor. In that way she gained a son on either side of the line. Nector came home from boarding school knowing white reading and writing, while Eli knew the woods. Now, these many years later, hard to tell why or how, my great-uncle Eli was still sharp, while Grandpa’s mind had left us, gone wary and wild.
Related Characters:
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