Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God introduces a world that has been ravaged by a mysterious pandemic that is causing the world to seemingly devolve. In response to this phenomenon, pregnant women are rounded up and sent to detainment facilities to be monitored throughout their pregnancies and births. Cedar Songmaker is one such woman trying to evade capture from the Unborn Protection Society (UPS) that has gained power in light of the pandemic.
In Future Home of the Living God, Erdrich explores the idea of extremism filling a power vacuum when the existing powers fall to outside circumstances. In this case, religious extremism with a focus on pro-life sentiments gains power due to the decreasing fertility rates and increasing chances of women with viable wombs giving birth to babies affected by the virus. Women are essentially turned into broodmares in birthing centers in an attempt to ensure the survival of humanity as a species at the expense of one group. This theme of women being forced to give up their human rights by corrupt powers is quite common in apocalyptic literature. Another prominent example where this theme is at the center is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. But this raises the question of why authors find this idea important to include in their novels? Why do authors want readers to experience and think about this theme? I think authors want to bring attention to this idea because it is very relevant to today’s society even though we tend to think of it as a far-off concept only found in literature. When women get pregnant today, many people automatically start treating her as solely an incubator for her fetus. People will touch her belly without her permission or give her unsolicited advice. This common behavior shows that as a society, we feel entitled to women’s bodies, especially when she is pregnant. When a woman becomes pregnant, she automatically loses her bodily autonomy to many people. On top of how pregnant women are treated by society, women of color face even more challenges. For so long in the United States, there have been efforts to control minorities through reproduction. One example of this that we have seen happen to Native American women who were forcibly or unknowingly sterilized by doctors when they went in to have other procedures done. This instance is important to Future Home of the Living God because both Cedar, the main character, and Erdrich, the author are Native American women. Cedar’s story parallels our history of controlling women of color’s reproductive rights and warns that we have not truly moved past it. With this issue being so prevalent in society even today, the idea of those in power completely revoking women’s human rights as we see in these novels does not seem so far-fetched anymore. For further reading on this subject please visit: TIME Magazine "A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters” ELLE “Inside The Dystopian Visions Of Margaret Atwood And Louise Erdrich”
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AuthorHi, I'm Brooke! In these blog posts, I will be reflecting on content in post-apocalyptic literature. Archives |