The Round House; by Loise Erdich

The Round House is a novel by American writer Louise Erdrich. The ROund House is told from the perspective of Joe, a young boy. Joe's mother, Geraldine, was a strong beautiful woman at first read, then she was raped. This made his mother empty and fall into a deep depression. Hoe and his father, Bazil, try to help Geraldine and get her out of the house and have her live once again. Joe take the responsible role, a coming of age type role, and helps his father with the case of convicting his wife's rapist.

What a powerful story, I for sure would use this text in the classroom. This reminds me of a statistic I found last year when hearing that native woman are mostly raped and the case is never solved. According to an additional New York Times article, “American Indian women are raped and sexually assaulted at a rate four times the national average. They are also 10 times as likely to be murdered than other Americans” (New York Times). I think this reading can bring up topics such as real world problems, cold cases and rape. Rape is such a touchy topic in high school, yet I think we should teach them the history of it. How to do it, no idea. Though I can see it being applied in the classroom. It is the concept of rape, so this is a difficult topic to teach. These sexual assaults and language and sexualization of females brings up more difficult topics for the classroom. This text is good to teach in college, but high school (where I want to teach it) would involve a permission slip to be signed by a students parent or guardian. This book talks about real and terrible things that happen in our world, students should learn about these injustices at the high school age. I am willing to argue on this for days.

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