Abstract
[...]as Rifkin points out, the "processes of racialization and the (re)production of white privilege" have historically centered around a compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal social formation in which the male person is dominant and the straight white male person is at the nexus of power, prestige, and wealth (32). Because of this gendering of power and privilege, Charging Elk's performances of an exoticized, straight masculinity assigns him the outsider status of the racially different while orienting him on the social hierarchy above the effeminate white male person, women, and other racial minorities in his social milieu. [...]the narrator points out that Charging Elk's infatuation with a prostitute is meant to be understood as just that, a sexual infatuation, not love or any of its constituent qualities: "Charging Elk still didn't know much about love, its complications, heartaches, and rewards, but he had learned enough to make life almost bearable," the narrator explains (Welch 233). After this visiondream, Charging Elk realizes that "his heart was not here [France]; nor was it there [Pine Ridge]" (235), and he tries to forget his vision of his dead relatives on the reservation, but "the only way he could think of to combat the persistent dream was to crowd it out with thoughts of the girl in the blue robe" (236). [...]for Charging Elk, heterosexual relationships function as surrogates for French middle-class normalcy-for his survival in that world-and mask the loss of his home and kin. [...]Charging Elk leaves his home at a young age while his home culture undergoes radical transformation.