Blue Ravens: Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor (review)

Gerald Vizenor knows the importance of memory and place. His writing has often drawn from the experience of the Anishinaabeg and their storied connection to the lands emanating from the White Earth Reservation and the surrounding lakes and woods, but also from the active presence of Native people in urban spaces. In previous novels Vizenor has told tricky stories of Native survivance that take place “between Minnesota and New Mexico” (xxi), as in the case of his groundbreaking first novel, Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart,¹ to more specific locations such as Tianjin China, Lake of the Woods, Oakland, Berkeley, Hiroshima, and, of course, Minneapolis and the White Earth Reservation in novels such as Griever, The Heirs of Columbus, Dead Voices, Hotline Healers, Hiroshima Bugi, Chair of Tears, and Shrouds of White Earth. It is clear from these stories that Vizenor is attentive to what N. Scott Momaday terms “the remembered earth” wherever his travels have taken him.

Spanning the tumultuous postallotment period in Anishinaabe history from 1907 to 1924, Blue Ravens tells a story of solace and survivance through the experiences of Aloysius and Basile Beaulieu, a pair of brothers from the White Earth Reservation. That they are also artists, a painter and writer, as well as soldiers in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I imbues the narrative with historical and artistic vitality. Known equally for his explorations in narrative chance and the creation of a new lexicon for Native American literary studies, Vizenor contributes to this venture in Blue Ravens with an elaboration of what he calls “totemic associations,” which are defined as “the chance associations of native memories in the natural world” (1). As with many of his other stories, Blue Ravens accrues meaning through an interpenetrating web of historical, literary, and artistic relationships that may not be immediately apparent but are made accessible through the recurring play of irony and visionary perception conveyed in the Beaulieu brothers’ writing and art. The thematic effect is exemplified in scenes that take place between White Earth and Minneapolis whereby the lives of characters take on cosmopolitan import through chance associations with literary figures Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, as well as interactions with the Japanese artist Yamada Baske and the trader/storier Odysseus Walker Young, who also invokes the presence of his namesakes in Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce’s Ulysses, and a Union general who became president. It is by these interactions that Basile and Aloysius gain a deeper understanding of the capacity of word and image “to confront the obvious and create stories by natural reason” (90).

The horror of World War I, which “continues forever on the White Earth Reservation in the stories of veterans and survivors of combat” (140), serves as a natural frame for the articulation of Vizenor’s creative insights. It is also imperative to note that the choice to set the story within this intensely traumatic “epoch of memory” also reveals a deep personal investment, one that is informed by his own family’s connection to the war, whereby the actions of two great uncles, Ignatius and Lawrence Vizenor, are honored. The work’s dedication to the memory of Ignatius Vizenor, who “was killed in action on October 8, 1918, at Montbréhain, France,” as well as relatives Augustus Hudon Beaulieu, Ellanora Beaulieu, John Clement Beaulieu, and Lawrence Vizenor, brings the theme of Blue Ravens into clearer focus.

It is apparent that Paris is a city that Vizenor holds dear, a place where he is well at home, with its cosmopolitan charm and renown as a sanctuary for artists, poets, lovers, novelists, tricksters, and philosophers. Vizenor draws on the creative synergy of the City of Lights to illuminate “visual scenes of memory and imagination,” in contrast to the “federal occupation on the reservation,” as one of the primary settings of Blue Ravens (111, 170). While the scenes set at White Earth and Minneapolis are handled with all of the insight and wit readers have come to expect...