The Round House By Louise Erdrich

The Round House is a story about morality and the line between good and evil. This story focuses on these themes through the lens of a thirteen-year-old boy as he struggles to decide his thoughts and feelings amongst all the wrong that was done to his mother. While this story has rather common themes it is the setting and context that make this story unique. The story takes place on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and showcases the legal structures of local, native, and federal law enforcement and how that comes to play in this case. This story offers representation for the minority Native American population and diversity in literature that can be brought into the classroom.

While this story was a different lens to a common narrative I am not sure that I would personally use it in my classroom. The Round House gives voice to the often unheard Native American population which is a rare occasion in most literature. However, the story does have some elements to it that I think are unnecessary to be included in a teaching tool. The explicit language and sexualization of females in some portions of the story are elements that I believe would make this a difficult text to get approved by administration. This is unfortunate because I think that the bulk of this book is something that is important to look over, not just for literary purposes but could be used in Social Studies to present the different types of law enforcement agencies that we have in America. Overall, I think that this book has potential to be a useful classroom tool, but I believe that the push-back when attempting to use this specific book could be avoided if another book on the same topic was utilized instead. However, I do believe that the literary discourse about the differing law enforcement structures is an interesting one and this book could be utilized well in teaching that if a teacher is passionate about bringing that to the classroom.