Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

While Motorcycles and Sweetgrass is primarily a work of realistic fiction, it also features many elements of the fable, mythology, and folklore—storytelling that often focuses on faith-based creation narratives, the adventures of deities, and allegorical morality tales that explain the origins of customs and traditions. By including Nanabush into the otherwise realistic narrative, Taylor is necessarily referencing some of the creation myths of the Anishnawbe people—traditional stories about this trickster deity often feature explanation for how a specific feature of reality came to be. For example, the novel’s extensive subplot about Nanabush’s ongoing feud with raccoons alludes to the myth in which Nanabush gave raccoons their facial markings and made them nocturnal as a punishment for theft. Nanabush’s interference in the lives of the people of Otter Lake often leads to the rediscovery of Indigenous traditions, the reintegration of isolated people into the community, and the rejection of destructive status quo—moral and historical lessons that he imparts much like a fable would.