100 pages 3 hours read

Drew Hayden Taylor

Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010

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Essay Topics

1.

After white colonists conquered North American Indigenous peoples, they spent centuries denigrating Indigenous belief systems. How does the novel consider the idea of “true religion”?

2.

Why does Lillian not want Maggie to be chief of the Otter Lake First Nation Band? What does Lillian mean when she says that “there should be more magic in this world” (180)?

3.

Consider the concept of transformation in the novel. Why do its characters resist change? Why do incomprehensible phenomena like Nanabush inspire anxiety?