The Sentence is Dead Serious About Books

Louise Erdrich's sly humor kills.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence, published in 2021, resonates as the tuning fork for the list of books I curated in response to January’s provocation to read a book that hinges on someone pretending to be something they’re not. Both The Sentence and Yellowface feature a white character who deliberately steals a racial trauma narrative and uses it to shore up a false identity. Each features a character who echoes the author’s life, serving as the narrator’s complement and a vehicle for humor. And both start off with a ridiculous death, setting off hijinks and consequences for a narrator with poor impulse control.

To wit: The Sentence’s Tookie allows a crush to persuade her to commit a madcap body theft, resulting in a sixty-year sentence for her non-violent crime. While isolated following a breakdown in prison, Tookie discovers she can remember all the books she’s ever read. Back among the population, she reads everything available—knitting instructions, the …