By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee

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By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee (1996) is a satirical novel by Tama Janowitz about the Slivenowiczes, a trailer park trash family who are forced to leave their home in a polluted swamp area near Lake Superior (called "Gitchee Gumee" in The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow) and who beg, steal and borrow their way across the North American continent until they all end up in Hollywood.

The first person narrator of the novel is 19 year old Maud Slivenowicz, whose major source of knowledge is Reader's Digest. Her mother, Evangeline, has five children by five different fathers none of whom has stayed with her. Without a regular income, the Slivenowicz family dream of one of them becoming a movie star, and at the end of the book it seems one of Maud's brothers might actually be given a role in some commercial.