Making Indians by Making It Our Business in Frances Washburn’s Elsie’s Business

Abstract

Frances Washburn's novel, Elsie's Business, seems to be a mystery novel at first glance. However, closer inspection reveals that the true project of the narrative is not to give factual answers about who murdered Elsie or who the father of her baby is or where her second child is, but what it means for Elsie's father to claim her as his daughter, and in the process, become claimed by the Native American community represented by Oscar. Elsie's business, or rather, legacy, becomes bringing her father into the family, and it is Oscar who makes Elsie's father into an Indian by talking about Elsie to him. By regarding Elsie's father as part of the family, and naming him as such, Oscar opens the way for Elsie's father to also become Native American, regardless of his racial identity as an African American; the blood relationship of father-daughter coupled with the cultural initiation performed through Oscar's narrative creates and legitimizes a Native American identity for Elsie's father, who does not have “Indian blood” per se. Further, it is suggested that the readers of the novel as audience to both the narrative and Oscar's education of Elsie's father can also become Indian regardless of their respective racial and ethnic identities through the identification achieved via the interpellation of the conflated “you” of Washburn's narrative, presenting a reconceptualization of Indian identity that rejects racial origins and privileges cultural performance, personal relationships, and affiliations.