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00:00What's going on? What's going on, Zionist Nation?
00:01So they wanted me to talk about books that I have read.
00:04Yeah, that I have read then.
00:05And I wanted to say we could look at this one.
00:09The Roundhouse.
00:10Yeah, that's one that always comes to my mind.
00:12Roundhouse.
00:16That's a good one.
00:18The Roundhouse is a novel by American writer Louis Erdrich,
00:22first published on October 2, 2012, by HarperCollins.
00:25The Roundhouse is Erdrich's 14th novel
00:28and is part of her Justice trilogy of novels,
00:31which includes The Plague of Doves,
00:33which I also read most of,
00:34released in 2008 in La Rose in 2016, which I read.
00:37The Roundhouse follows the story of Joe Coates,
00:40a 13-year-old boy who is frustrated with the poor investigation
00:43into his mother's gruesome attack
00:45and sets out to find his mother's attacker
00:47with the help of his best friends Cappy, Angus, and Zach.
00:51Like most of Erdrich's other works,
00:53The Roundhouse is set on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota.
00:57The Roundhouse won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012.
01:01The Roundhouse was originally published in 2012.
01:03The novel is set in 1988
01:05and is narrated by 13-year-old Joe Coates
01:09as he attempts to avenge his mother after she is brutally raped.
01:12Erdrich wrote the novel while diagnosed with cancer
01:14and has stated in interviews
01:17that the diagnosis impacted her productivity and passion for writing,
01:21though she was still able to write and publish The Roundhouse,
01:24as well as a children's book
01:25and a new revised version of her novel,
01:27The Antelope Wife.
01:29Erdrich was heavily inspired by the works of William Faulkner
01:33Yok...
01:34Yok...
01:36Yok...
01:36Yok-na-pa-ta-wa...
01:38Okay, hold on, let me try one more time.
01:40Yok-na-pa-ta-wa-fa novels.
01:44Yok-na-pa-ta-wa-fa novels.
01:46Because of this, Erdrich's novels, including The Roundhouse,
01:49are all primarily set in the same fictional location
01:52centered around the people who lived there
01:54throughout multiple generations.
01:55The Roundhouse specifically takes place in the same reservation
01:58as one of Erdrich's previous works, The Plague of Doves,
02:02and the same one that appears in the conclusion to the trilogy,
02:05La Rose.
02:06In the conclusion to the trilogy, La Rose.
02:08However, the significance of this North Dakota reservation,
02:11similar to the reservation in Erdrich's Love Medicine series,
02:15stems from her own upbringing as an Ojibwe child in North Dakota.
02:19Plot Summary
02:20The novel opens with Joe Coates and his father, Judge Basil Coates,
02:23pulling out saplings from their gardens, house, garden, and foundation.
02:27They realize Joe's mother and Basil's wife,
02:30Geraldine Coates, has not come home from an errand.
02:33The two go looking for her and see her speeding home.
02:35Geraldine arrives home smelling like gasoline and vomit
02:39and is clearly in shock.
02:40Joe and Basil take her to the hospital
02:42where Joe realizes his mother was raped.
02:45Police from multiple jurisdictions record statements
02:48from Geraldine and Basil
02:49and Joe is taken home by his aunt, Clements.
02:51A week later, Geraldine stays in bed, afraid to go outside.
02:55Joe, Basil, and Clements bring food for her.
02:58Geraldine refuses to tell any details about her rape or rapist,
03:01which causes her family stress.
03:03The following week, Joe and Basil search through past case files
03:06in an effort to find a potential suspect.
03:09One case pertains to the adoption of a woman, Linda Lark,
03:12which Joe marks as potentially relevant to his mother's attack.
03:15Joe and his friends take it upon themselves
03:17to investigate Geraldine's rape,
03:19which leads them to the roundhouse,
03:21where the incident took place.
03:22They find a gas canister and a pack of Ham's beer,
03:25which they drink even though they realize
03:27the beer is potential evidence.
03:29The group theorizes that the rapist is Father Travis,
03:32a Catholic priest,
03:33which it never would be.
03:36However, their initial assumptions about Father Travis
03:38turn out to be wrong.
03:39Later, Basil takes Joe to talk to Linda Lark,
03:42and Linda speaks about her physical deformities
03:44and how she was abandoned by her birth parents because of them.
03:48Linda describes her twin brother, Lyndon Lark.
03:50Basil marks Lindon as a potential suspect.
03:53Meanwhile, Joe finds a doll containing a large sum of money near the lake
03:57and entrusts the money to his uncle Whitey's girlfriend, Sanja,
04:00which she spends on herself despite having advised Joe
04:03to save it for his own education.
04:05At the gas station, Joe works with Sanja and her husband, Whitey.
04:09Joe pumps gas for someone only to realize it's Linda Lark, Lyndon Lark.
04:13Later that night, Whitey beats Sanja for suspicion
04:16that Sanja is cheating on him.
04:17Joe defends Sanja and quits his job at the gas station.
04:20After the incident, Joe goes to stay at Clements' house
04:23where Mushom tells him the story about Wendigos.
04:28Joe and his friends run into a church missionary group by the lake,
04:31and Cappy falls in love with one of the missionaries, Zelia.
04:34Joe goes home and asks Basil the identity of Geraldine's rapist,
04:38but Basil refuses to answer.
04:40Joe and his friends witness the recovery of the car of a woman named
04:44Mela, a government secretary.
04:46Joe spots a fabric similar to the doll he found by the lake,
04:49and he begins to put the details together.
04:51Joe blames his father for not handling the case properly,
04:54and Basil tells Joe about the disadvantages of being a tribal judge.
04:58Despite his previous reserved and calm nature,
05:01when Basil later sees Lyndon in a grocery store,
05:03he and Joe attack the suspect.
05:05However, Lyndon escapes.
05:07Basil has a heart attack and is taken to a hospital.
05:10Joe plans to kill Lyndon himself.
05:12Cappy joins Joe's plan to kill Lyndon, and they steal a rifle.
05:16Joe finds Lyndon and shoots him, but doesn't kill him.
05:19Cappy ultimately shoots and kills Lyndon.
05:21Joe and Cappy flee the scene,
05:23discarding the rifle under Lynda Lark's porch.
05:25Joe returns for the rifle,
05:27and Lynda reveals she knows Joe killed Lyndon,
05:29and explains why Lyndon raped Geraldine.
05:31Cappy decides to travel to Montana, where Zelia lives.
05:35Joe and his friends decide to join him and bring alcohol for the trip.
05:38Cappy crashes the car and dies.
05:41Angus and Zach are injured.
05:42At the end of the novel, Geraldine and Basil bring Joe home.
05:47Jurisdiction of travel law vs. U.S. federal and state law
05:50As reviewer Alden Mudge indicates,
05:53Indigenous reservation judicial law is a constant element in the roundhouse.
05:57Due to the fact that no one in the story can pinpoint where Geraldine's rape occurred,
06:01whether it happened on a patch of land under the jurisdiction of the federal government
06:04or on the grounds of the roundhouse,
06:06the case becomes an issue of reservation vs. state and federal government prosecution
06:10over crimes involving reservation residents.
06:13Julia Tharp hints at the irony of Governor Curtis Yeltau trying to adopt Mayla's child
06:19after she is deceased.
06:21Curtis Yeltau, who is known to harbor racist views against Indigenous people,
06:26has an affair with his intern, Myla, who is also underage.
06:29Yeltau, attempting to adopt Mayla's child even though the child is biologically his,
06:34hints at how corrupt the federal government is when dealing with sexual abuse
06:37and misconduct against Indigenous women.
06:40Yeltau is more concerned with protecting his political power
06:43and ridicule for sleeping with an underage girl
06:45and tries to cover up his crimes by adopting Mayla's child.
06:51Thomas Machi outlines the implications of travel law as the central conflict of the novel.
06:57He explains how, because Geraldine's attacker was Lyndon,
07:00a white man who is not a recognized reservation resident,
07:04the novel acts as a potential commentary on the Supreme Court case
07:08Oliphant vs. Saucamish Indian Tribe,
07:11which decided that tribal courts cannot prosecute non-Indigenous people
07:15who commit crimes on tribal land unless authorized by Congress.
07:19Basil explains to Joe that being a tribal judge
07:22doesn't give him any judicial power over Geraldine's attacker Lyndon,
07:25which leads to Joe and Cappy taking revenge on Lyndon by murdering him.
07:29Sexual Violence Against Indigenous Women
07:34As Ron Charles explains in his review of the novel,
07:37Erdrich explores the difficulties Indigenous women face
07:41and how their struggles stem from misogynistic perceptions about sexuality,
07:45tribal identity, and gender.
07:47Geraldine's rape stems from the real-world phenomena
07:49that Indigenous women face at reservation lands in the late 20th century
07:53as outlined by Sarah Deer.
07:54As Julia Tharp points out in a critical study of the novel,
07:58Indigenous women have a 2.5 times higher chance
08:00of experiencing sexual violence in their lifetimes
08:03than the general United States population
08:05and statistically, roughly 37% of Indigenous women
08:08may experience sexual assault in their lifetimes.
08:11After Geraldine is raped by Lyndon,
08:13she is too demoralized to complete her daily tasks
08:17and is bedridden for several weeks following the crime.
08:20Geraldine becomes a shadow of who she used to be
08:22and when asked by Joe who her attacker was,
08:25she quickly dismisses him.
08:26As Erdrich noted in a piece for the New York Times,
08:30the demoralizing attitude Geraldine exhibits
08:32refers to the lack of judicial justice
08:34that will be delivered on her attacker Lyndon
08:36given that federal prosecutors declined to prosecute
08:3967% of sexual abuse cases committed on tribal lands.
08:43Critics have noted how Lyndon, a white man who rapes Geraldine,
08:47coincides with the reality that Indigenous women
08:49are far more likely to experience sexual violence
08:53from non-Indigenous men.
08:55Geraldine, Basil, and Joe have little faith in the local judicial system
08:58in solving Geraldine's attack,
09:00which results in Joe searching out his mother's rapist himself.
09:05Coming of age and manhood,
09:06Joe Coates, who is the narrator of The Roundhouse
09:08and is an adolescent teenager when the events of the novel take place.
09:12Joe is unaware of sexual violence
09:13and laws that prohibit tribal citizens from seeking justice.
09:16Julie Tharp explains how his mother's rape puts Joe in a difficult situation
09:20as he is beginning to view women, such as Sanja, as sexual objects,
09:24but bears witness to his mother's misery from the hands of male sexual aggression.
09:28Joe is surrounded by male role models who exhibit different forms of masculinity,
09:32with some exhibiting sexual abuse towards women
09:34and others exemplifying leadership and restraint,
09:38such as his father, Basil.
09:39When Joe blackmails Sanja,
09:41she confronts Joe, claiming he is no better than the other men she deals with.
09:45Joe rejected Whitey's abusive treatment of Sanja
09:47when he quit his gas station job,
09:49and as Tharp outlines,
09:51this incident forces Joe to consider a toxic cycle of misogyny.
09:55Joe's masculinity also comes into effect
09:57when he plans to kill Lyndon
09:58by preparing his plan of drawing him out on the golf course
10:01and murdering him for abusing his mother.
10:04The Roundhouse won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012,
10:07competing against the likes of Junot Diaz's
10:10This Is How You Lose Her
10:11and Kevin Power's The Yellow Birds.
10:13The novel was also included in the Oyster Reviews list
10:16of 100 Best Books of the Decade so far in 2015.
10:19According to some of the most reputable literary critics,
10:23The Roundhouse emerges as an emotional, deeply moving novel
10:26and one of Erdrich's best works.
10:28Ron Charles of The Washington Post focuses his review primarily...
10:31Alright, that's enough of that.
10:35Despite being largely well-received,
10:36there are several negative criticisms of the novel as well.
10:39The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani claims
10:44Erdrich's portrayal of a realistic criminal act
10:46in a reservation is too cartoony,
10:48especially when compared to her previous novel,
10:50The Plague of Doves,
10:52which Kakutani claims was more successful
10:54in portraying the shades of psychological grayness.
10:57She further delves into the fact that the main antagonist
11:00is one-dimensional and seems to be a stand-in
11:02for a more fleshed-out and developed villain.
11:06Another sharp criticism comes from the Boston Globe
11:09in a review stating that the novel is resolved quickly
11:12and abruptly shifts the power towards its conclusion.
11:18Alright, well, we can do more novels, yeah.
11:20That's the first one I would want to do, though,
11:21if I was going to describe novels.
11:23Should we add Louisa?
11:24Yeah, we can add Louisa.
11:26Don't ask Josh.
11:28We can add Louisa.
11:31We'll do that later, though.
11:32Don't ask Josh.
11:37What happened?