Posttribal Sunshine in Michael Dorris' - Cloud Chamber - 1999

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North Dakota Quarterly

Volume 66, Number 3 Summer 1999

ContentsAlice Friman 5 The Gulf (poem)Naomi Rand 7 Lonely Hearts Beat as One:

The Importance of FamilyD. E. Steward 24 Setembre

Julianna Baggott 32 How I Fear God (poem)Thomas Matchie 33 Posttribal Sunshine in Michael Donis'

Cloud ChamberVirginia Egan 42 Seventh Floor Balcony (story)

Jill Gidmark 52 Melville Here and NowJoe Ducato 61 Night Swimming (story)

Ron Mohring 68 Penny Candy (poem)Terry Caesar 70 Nationality, Gender, and Body in

"Neighbor Rosicky" and"Old Mrs. Harris"Samrat Upadhyay 79 Mentor (story)

John Calvin Rezmerski 89 Red, White, and Blue (poem)Philip Bryant 90 Malcom X at Temple No.2:

Chicago 1960 (poem)Harvey Knull 91 Theses and Dissertations

ReviewsFay the Thureen 113 Orm Overland, The Western Home: A

Literary History of Norwegian AmericaJane Varley 117 Heid Erdrich, Fishing for Myth


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THOMAS MATCHIE

Posttribal Sunshine inMichael Dorris' Cloud Chamber

In his critical volume Turn to the Native, Arnold Krupat aligns himself withChippewa novelist-critic Gerald Vizenor's posture toward postmodernNative American literature. In novels like Bearheart Vizenor creates animaginary posttribal community of pilgrims traveling from Minnesota south(rather than west) to create on the symbolic level a more tolerant kind ofAmerica. In contrast to novelist-critics like Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, who seeassimilation as destructive to Native culture, Krupat argues that in the pre-sent postcolonial world one must transcend ethnicity and race in non-destructive ways for the purpose of healing. One writer who might agree,though in his own way, is Michael Dorris-a novelist Krupat mentions onlyin passing. In Cloud Chamber Dorris fashions a realistic story of a new20th-century westward movement in which five generations of characterscombine all kinds of differences-national origin, race, gender, sexual ori-entation, and culture-in the interest of togetherness. Moving through mostof the last one hundred years, the author then settles on a small but globalcommunity situated in the geographic heart of America. As Rayona Taylor,whose heritage is multicultural, says during a powwow on a Montana reser-vation in the end, ' 'There's room for everybody" (316).

Before reviewing the plot of Cloud Chamber, which passes throughseveral historical and cultural changes in this century-in Ireland and theUnited States-it is important to be aware of the author's poetic and sym-bolic language which permeates and connects these different times andplaces. If the novel is a "multifaceted explanation of what it is to be a partof a family" (Publishers Weekly), that extended family may be seen as achamber of sorts, one clouded by all sorts of misunderstanding, anger,even hate. Clouds in themselves can be very dark and foreboding, filledwith uncontrollable, destructive elements, but they can also be very beau-tiful, even majestic. And one must not forget that they exist in the sky,

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where eagles fly, and light shines through, and sometimes they bring thedry land rain. It is a Montana sky under which Dorris visited his father'sModoc relatives as a child (Croft 1) and later traveled and did field work(Wong 196). For the most part, however, Cloud Chamber takes place inKentucky, the home of Dorris' Irish mother (Grantham 45). Indeed, it isThebes, Kentucky, a mid-American town which becomes the center ofthis virtual "Greek tragedy" (Cart). But families often unite around food,and ironically it is a rather hilarious mishap at the Kentucky FriedChicken restaurant in Montana near the end that ties Thebes to that reser-vation so well-known from Dorris' first novel, A Yellow Raft in BlueWater. In this context white, black, and red histories meet in what RayonaTaylor calls "our own personal ethnic rainbow coalition" (273).

There are seven voices in the novel, each tonally different as they telltheir desperate stories set against 20th-century historical and culturalchange among the three unlikely groups-the Irish, Afro-Americans, andAmerican Indians. But none is as distinct and powerful as that of theyoung Rayona who brings them all together in the end where her actions,dress, and language betray her self-assurance as an Irish, Black, NativeAmerican. Rollerblading in "A maroon spandex sports bra and black run-ning shorts" (268), she says of herself: "I couldn't be Christine .... Momhad retired the jersey" (271). She says this as her loose, waving darkhair-s-and hair is a pervasive image in Dorris' fiction-picks up differentthemes spanning the novel. Initially, we learn that Rose Mannion, whosename Rayona eventually chooses for herself, has dark snake-like hair,dramatizing her Spanish, indeed multicultural, roots. It is an image thatcontrasts with one used to describe her Irish lover, "Satan's own serpent"(24) who betrays his country and their love. But the dark-haired Rayonacounters that betrayal by selecting in an Indian naming ceremony near theend the name of Rose-her Irish Rose-as her own. At this time Ray ishanded Rose's "Crystal cut glass vase," which reflects in the light "itsown individual color of sky or earth" (316), just as do the separate mem-bers of this extended family. There is also the "eagle feather" presented toRay by Dayton, a homosexual unjustly maligned by the community inYellow Raft, but here a part of the "breeds" who "stick together" (315).Finally, the "bald eagle" (309) which flies overhead is at once a Nativeand American symbol, suggesting that something truly magnificent is tak-ing place-on earth as well as in the clouds.

Now to the three historical periods. The action in Cloud Chamberbegins in Ireland. It is near the turn of the century when Irish political his-tory is legend. Dorris, a mixed blood of Irish as well as French and Nativeancestry, mentions no specific dates, and his use of places like Boyle,Ireland, only seems to place the action in the center of Erin's Isle. In thebackground, however, the reader can sense such events as the Sinn Fein34


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Revolution in 1913 and the Irish Rebellion of 1916, followed by thetreaties of 1920 and 1921. In each case, and all were rooted in economicdepression and social inj ustice, the Irish emerged the loser. NicholasMansergh calls these events basic to an understanding of Ireland's hatredof the Crown, as they give "final, concentrated explosive force to politicalnationalism" (314). Against this backdrop Rose, an Irish girl of Spanishdescent, is forced to choose her country over her lover, Gerry Lynch, aBritish sympathizer. Though her voice might be "hyper-romantic"(Sayers), Dorris is at his best as he roots her love story in Ireland's brutal,ongoing rebellion. Rose's decision to have Gerry killed is breathtaking,after which she and her new husband Martin McGarry, a weak secondchoice "skib" (as he calls himself), must flee to America, or Thebes,Kentucky (Dorris' modern Greece), to avoid retaliation. Irish emigrationis another historical reality that covers decades of history. Gerry Lynchcomes from Galway, one of the poorest areas in Ireland. Rose and herfamily, however, migrate not to the traditional Irish destinations of Bostonor Australia-though they fake such destinations (43)-but to Kentucky.It is here that Dorris himself grew up, giving him firsthand knowledge ofboth Southern hospitality and, as we shall see, the state's incipient racism.

But the Irish character is as important to the novel as Irish history.Political involvement is only one attribute. It is largely a Catholic countrywhere men rule, but "mothers enjoy power in a behind-the-scenes matri-archy" (Connery 192). And if there is anything an Irish mother wants herson to be it is a priest. In Thebes the McGarrys have two boys, Rose'sobvious favorite, Andrew, who becomes a priest, and Robert, a weak soullike his father who works as a carpenter for the railroad. Bridie Kilkennymarries Robert to be close to Andy where she and Rose, like "twoOlympians" (74) compete for his affection. In Ireland the priest, while animportant moral guide, is really ignored in matters of economics and poli-tics (Connery 162), and this is Andy's role in the novel. When he is killedin a railroad accident, Rose sues the railroad, though it costs Robert hisjob. Rose, having made a crucial political decision in Ireland, does thesame in America, for her "demand for justice" supersedes her son's well-being (53). As a result Robert and Bridie, together with their two younggirls, Edna and Marcella, move to Louisville where Robert has a mentaland physical breakdown, and eventually Bridie takes him back to Thebeswhere his own mother Rose cares for him as a near invalid.

If Dorris uses the feud in the British Isles early in the century as abackground for introducing his Irish characters, he capitalizes on somesignificant American history prior to and following World War II to leadus into his world of Blacks. America in the 30s and 40s was not a pleasantone for Afro-Americans. In the South racism was rampant, reaching itsmost violent expression in lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan. As late as

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1940 Atlanta newspapers reported that hundreds of Blacks and Blacksympathizers had been abducted and flogged during the year (Revere445). Strangely enough, this was also a period of the Harlem Renaissancein the arts when Jean Toomer in vignettes like "Blood-burning Moon" andRichard Wright in "Big Boy Leaves Home" portray in original forms thedeep, often explosive feelings of white Americans toward Blacks. Dorrisassumes this kind of history as a backdrop for his story, but he focuses onone struggling family's thoughts and feelings in a climate obviously hos-tile to Afro-Americans. Perhaps the one outlet for Black males at the timewas the military where integration was mandatory, and travel out of theUnited States gave colored Americans a chance to witness other culturesnot as prejudiced as their own. In Cloud Chamber, Earl Taylor, a youngBlack who delivers groceries to a tuberculosis sanitarium in Waverly,Kentucky, belongs to this era. It is in the middle of the Depression whenhe meets Marcella, the daughter of Robert and Bridie, recovering from TBat Waverly Hills with her older sister, Edna. Both have contracted the dis-ease from their invalid father, Robert.

Tuberculosis, a communicable but still controllable disease, was theleading cause of death in America in the first half of this century ("BriefHistory"), and Dorris weaves this historical phenomenon into the fabric ofhis novel. Before she gets too weak, the older daughter Edna works as areceptionist to keep "Mama afloat" and "Marcella in school" (120-21);then the stock market crashes and both sisters end up at Waverly. In thisscenario Dorris is able to illustrate the fragility of life and the closeness ofdeath in a different way from the Irish Rebellion. Still, in the sanitariumthe younger Marcella, like Rose before her, falls hopelessly in love. Shedevelops a "magnetic attraction" for Earl, the grocery man, whom she seesas "a Michelangelo statue come to life" (160) and quickly becomes preg-nant. But this is a racist climate, so they are married secretly and have totravel separately across the country to San Francisco where he joins thearmy to gain employment, leaving Marcella living near a California mili-tary base with their young son, Elgin. Edna, more like the later, loverlessRose, having "married herself' like the "Oracle at Delphi" (171-72), is leftto support the fatherless family as a bookkeeper after leaving Waverly.When Earl is apparently killed in Europe, his mother Marcella, Aunt Ednaand Grandmother Rose raise the boy back in Louisville. It is the city whereDorris himself was brought up by his mother, his aunt, and his grandmoth-er (Gale E7). But what is most telling in this section of the novel is thestruggle this boy encounters to define himself as an Afro-American in acountry unsympathetic with his kind. Like the plight of Rose in Ireland,Elgin's is an intense and moving story. And as in the earlier case, Dorrisconcentrates on the young man's personal battle to survive, not on any ofthe horrifying racial episodes going on in the country.36


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When Elgin gets older he is stifled by "feminine swooning" (187), butworse than this these women raise him as a handsome, dark-skinnedItalian, "exotic looking" with "a beautiful suntan" (188-89). Racism withina family can sometimes be just as painful as overt violence, and now Elginbegins to fume. When his mother says, "You're Irish .... Irish as Paddy'sPig," he rejoins, "Black Irish?" Eventually, Elgin finds that he can nolonger hide who he is. His friends call him "nigger lips," he cannot get adate for thejunior prom, and restaurants refuse to serve him food (194-95).He has to visit his father's black cousin on the West End of town to feelreal, and it is this woman, not his immediate family, who squares with him,telling him about his father and encouraging the boy to follow in thatman's footsteps, claiming: "It's your ticket out of town" (195). A typicalvictim of white racism long before the Civil Rights Bill of the 1960s, Elginopts against his mother, like Rose choosing against her lover, thoughMarcella thinks she is going to die (199). As does his father before him, heenlists in the army in order "to find out who I am" (197).

Like his father he also goes to Europe where he meets a gay officer,Paul Jenkins, who accompanies him to the Austrian border in search ofhis father; ironically, he meets his half-sister, Veronica, in a bar in Passau,who tells him about their father. In Dorris' fiction gays are particularlysensitive and caring individuals. Sergeant Jenkins reminds us of DaytonNickles in Yellow Raft; maligned unjustly by the Native community, hetakes in Christine when she returns from Seattle to die. In Cloud ChamberPaul helps Elgin follow his grandmother's advice: "Visiting the past is away to guarantee your own immortality" (227). What he finds throughVeronica is that Earl, now dead, had faked his death to marry, changed hisname to "Hans," and worked as a grocer to support his family (233).Dorris' own father served in Europe, where he committed suicide, a factDorris never admitted and which came to light only after the author's ownsuicide in 1997 (Covert All). After another stint in the army, Elginreturns to Seattle where he meets and marries Christine, a NativeAmerican "more heart-wasted" than he is and to whom Rayona is born.

In the context of the Vietnam War Dorris introduces a third culturalgroup, the Native American. This war represents contemporary history,one that hovers in the background of Yellow Raft, much as do the Irishrebellion and Black oppression in Cloud Chamber. What we know fromthe first novel is that Christine championed her brother Lee's entry intothat war, that Dayton Nickles, Lee's friend, and much to the consternationof Christine, vehemently protested that war, and that Christine goes toSeattle to seek information on Lee, missing in action, where she meets andmarries Elgin Taylor. In the process of coming to terms with Lee's deathand Elgin's infidelity, Christine dissipates her life before deciding to comeback to the reservation to die; ironically, she chooses to live with Dayton,

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her old competitor for Lee's soul, now falsely accused of abusing his stu-dents and alienated from the community. Here she abandons her nowteenage daughter Rayona, who like her father before her runs away to findherself, something she does by the end of the second part of Yellow Raft.We know little of the married life of Elgin and Christine, though in CloudChamber Elgin returns once in the 70s to the Midwest, bringing Rayona asa child when Christine is sick. The family then learns about Christine fromDayton, who writes to Marcella from the reservation. Montana with its"pearl sky" was a nostalgic place for both Dorris and his wife LouiseErdrich (White 18). He had "a very strong feeling" (Wong 208) for thatstate, which now becomes the focus of the meeting of several cultures.

What is most interesting is that there is no mention in Yellow Raft ofthe Irish, and perhaps the major contribution of Cloud Chamber is thatDorris attempts something extremely unusual in the interest of unity: hebrings together three highly unlikely cultures in a common cause. In theNative world, being a mixed-blood can be very painful because one runsthe risk of not being accepted by either race. So commingling three groupsin a single meaningful celebration can be even more tenuous. The deeperirony is that, as Mary Crow Dog claims in her autobiography, LakotaWoman, historically as a matter of policy the whites destroyed thetyospaye, or extended family as Native peoples conceive it. She continues,

The close-knit clan, set in its old ways, was a stumbling block in thepath of the missionary and government agent, its traditions and cus-toms a barrier to what the white man called "progress and civiliza-tion." (13)

What Dorris attempts in Cloud Chamber reverses the process, and he doesit by bringing one of these oppressive white groups, the Irish, back into thepicture, not as a destructive element but as a catalyst for unity. Bill Moyersobserves that Dorris's characters, though "bonded across time and spaceby kinship and community," are often "separated from their community, ortheir extended family" (460). In Cloud Chamber, however, the authorbrings together families separated by international barriers as a way ofhealing local scars. He does it from the inside out, so to speak, so that thathealing grace comes from within the different cultural groups. For Dorristhe Native context, in this case the Montana reservation, is best suited forsuch a union, or reunion, because Europeans, by and large, lack "the expe-rience of pluralism," something Indian people across the continent havebecause "they were surrounded by other cultures" (Moyers 466).

By the novel's end, Rose has died, and Edna and Marcella return toIreland to spread her ashes under a tree where she had met Gerry Lynch.It is a gesture which connects her to her true love and to Irish history, onethese girls never experienced. The last two chapters then belong to

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Rayona. She is now a young woman preparing for her naming ceremo-ny-something she has to explain to Elgin, her Black father who lackedany ceremony surrounding his growing up. Here she chooses the name"Rose" (267), though she knows little about her Irish-Spanish great-great-grandmother. Now her extended family returns-her father, grandmotherMarcella, and great-aunt Edna, only to witness a comic catastrophe at theKentucky Fried Chicken restaurant where Ray works. In this context AuntEdna, the hard-working, racist virgin, one who never had a child of herown, but who worked to save her family during the Depression, now sur-faces as a "savior," supplying her expertise as a cook. Finally, at the pow-wow Ray is presented with a crystal vase, Rose's Irish treasure, as well asher uncle Lee's Purple Heart and an eagle feather from Dayton, her moth-er's friend and "savior" in her last days. For Rayona and the whole fami-ly, the circle is complete as the celebration unites three cultures in a cere-mony that is truly healing. As Krupat would say, it is an event that is"posttribal" or "transnational." Skow equates it with the cooling effect ofa "spring breeze" after an "intricate and brooding plot."

To go back to our discussion of imagery in the beginning, Rayona is ayoung woman on the brink of womanhood, and Dorris uses her as his uni-fying catalyst. Her blades, dress, language, and job at a Kentucky FriedChicken restaurant betray a self-assured, joyful person thoroughlyimmersed in Americana-a far different picture than we have of Elgin'syouth. We know much of her growing pains from Yellow Raft, painsequivalent to Rose's in Ireland or Elgin's in Thebes, but here she is a per-son at peace and "in the clouds." I t is a context in which several aspects ofher Native culture come through. One is her naming ceremony, a ritual cel-ebration of maturity-something Elgin never had. "It's like when you getto a certain age you get to become ... yourself' (272), she tells her father.Another is her idea of the extended family; her relatives from all threesides-Irish, Black, and Native-join her for the celebration. Elgin, weremember, chose to run away from his family. It is interesting that even theblowup at Kentucky Fried Chicken turns into a communal affair whereEdna, who knows the Colonel's wife, saves the day with her knowledge ofthe "formula" (292). The meal itself is communal, as it is comic, thus serv-ing to unite all the disparate elements. The "bald eagle" (309) flies over-head as Dayton presents Rayona with an eagle feather, symbolic of herrelationship to the power of the tribe. And the "crystal vase" coming fromRose suggests another Native value, the importance of one's ancestors. ForNative Americans life is cyclic rather than linear, and that is what happensat the novel's end. The chamber may be clouded, but it is also strangelycrowded as this trifold group joins together in Montana.

Like Vizenor, Dorris is posttribal and healing, but he is realistic ratherthan allegorical. His plot is linear, covering the century with its major histori-

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cal events, but it is also cyclic, uniting individuals, families, cultures in aMontana powwow-at least for the moment. If there is something thatmakes this gathering possible, this "clouded chamber" less clouded, it isinterdependence. In spite of the wholesale Irish manipulation, or Blacks"jumping" society, or Indians limited to a reservation, people need eachother, and that need is paramount. Rose needs Gerry, but she also needsMartin, however much an unconscious "skib." In a similar way Bridie needsRobert, and Robert, unloved and used, knows he's a good father, and heneeds Rose in the end. Marcella and Edna need their father, as they do eachother, in spite of their differences and constant fighting. Marcella needs Earl,no matter his color, to know she's alive and normal, though he seems to needa European woman to forget America's racist laws and customs. As a virgin,Edna couldn't be happier than to have Marcella's Elgin, even without Earl.Elgin needs Paul Jenkins, though he is gay, and maybe it is his gayness thatmakes him so available and helpful, a surrogate "father" (222).

In losing her "brother," Christine needs Elgin, as she later doesDayton, another gay unjustly ostracized by society, but fundamentallyother-centered. Rayona sees him as the greatest of human beings.Kentucky Fried Chicken needs Edna to save the day, and Rayona needseverybody-Edna, grandmother Aunt Ida (Christine's "mother" whoreturns from the pages of Yellow Raft), her father Elgin, Dayton, andfinally her Irish Rose-to make her day. Family is just that-family. InDonis' own words, it is the "we" more than the "I" (Moyers 467). It ismore basic, more powerful, more necessary than nationality, race, gender,anything else. That is the case in the end of Cloud Chamber. A kind ofapocalypse, it may remind us of Sartre's No Exit (we have each otherthough it sometimes seems like hell), but it is also Camelot, that "onebrief shining moment" when the sun shines through, at least momentarily,to dispel the clouds. Or to look at it from a more Native American per-spective, when those mysterious chambers within the clouds let loosetheir life-giving rain.Works Cited"Brief History of Tuberculosis." Revised: 23 July 1996. 17 March 1997.

.Cart, Michael. Rev. of Cloud Chamber, by Michael Dorris. Booklist 15 Oct. 1996:

379.Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. "Polit ics and the Novel." Wicazo Review 7:2 (1991): 78-

80 .Connery, Donald. The Irish. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.Covert, Colin. "The Anguished Life of Michael Dorris." Minneapolis Star

Tribune. 3 August 1997: Al s -.

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Croft, Georgia. "Something Ventured." Valley News [White River Valley,Vermont]. 28 April 1987: 1-2.Crow Dog, Mary, with Richard Erdoes. Lakota Woman. New York: HarperCollins,1990.

Dorris, Michael. Cloud Chamber. New York: Scribner, 1997.-. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. New York: Warner Books, 1987.Gale, Elaine. "Character Builder." Minneapolis Star Tribune 23 Jan. 1997: El+.Grantham, Shelby. "Intimate Collaboration or 'A Novel Partnership." Dartmouth

Alumni Magazine, March 1985: 43-47.Krupat, Arnold. The Tum to the Native: Studies in Criticism and Culture. Lincoln:

U of Nebraska P, 1996.Mansergh, Nicholas. The Irish Question, 1840-1921. Toronto: U of Toronto P,

1975.Moyers, Bill . "Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris." A World of Ideas. New York:

Doubleday, 1959.460-69.Rev. of Cloud Chamber, by Michael Dorris. Publishers Weekly Nov. 1996: 55.Revere, Richard H. "The Ku Klux Klan Rides Again." Nation 50 (1940): 445-46.Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books,

1955.Sayers, Valerie. "Thy People Shall Be My People." Rev. of Cloud Chamber, by

Michael Dorris. New York Times Book Review 9 Feb. 1997: 11.Skow, John. Rev. of Cloud Chamber, by Michael Dorris. Time 17 Feb. 1997: 88.Toomer, Jean. "Blood-burning Moon." Cane. 1923. New York: Harper & Row,

1969.51-67.Vizenor, Gerald. Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles. Minneapolis: U of

Minnesota P, 1990.White, Sharon, and Glenda Burnside. "On Native Ground: An Interview with

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris." The Bloomsbury Review 8.4 (1988); 16-18.

Wong, Hertha D. "An Interview with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris." NorthDakota Quarterly 5.1 (1987): 196-218.Wright, Richard. "Big Boy Leaves Home." Uncle Tom's Children. New York:

Harper &Row, 1940. 17-53.

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Posttribal Sunshine in Michael Dorris' - Cloud Chamber - 1999