Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system.[12] He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived.[10] Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not experience mental damage but had other side effects.[12]
His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, served as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and worked other jobs as well.[12]
Alexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" from white nuns who taught there. They called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual, due to his hydrocephalus as an infant. Until the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting; he had to take strong drugs to control them.[12][13] Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males.[13] Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals.[14]
Education
In order to better his education, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high school, where he was the only Native American student,[13] 22 miles from the reservation in Reardan, Washington.[12] He excelled at his studies and became a star player on the basketball team, the Reardan High School Indians.[12] He was elected class president and was a member of the debate team.[12]
His successes in high school won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university in Spokane.[12][13] Originally, Alexie enrolled in the Pre-medical program with hopes of becoming a doctor,[13] but found he was squeamish during dissection in his anatomy classes.[13] Alexie switched to law, but found that was not suitable, either.[13] He felt enormous pressure to succeed in college, and consequently, he began drinking heavily to cope with his anxiety.[15] Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes.[13]
In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington State University (WSU),[13] where he took a creative writing course taught by Alex Kuo, a respected poet of Chinese-American background. Alexie was at a low point in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor to him.[10] Kuo gave Alexie an anthology entitled Songs of This Earth on Turtle's Back, by Joseph Bruchac. Alexie said this book changed his life as it taught him "how to connect to non-Native literature in a new way".[10][13][16] He was inspired by reading works of poetry written by Native Americans.[10]
Sexual harassment allegations
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment against him by several women, to which he responded "Over the years, I have done things that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also admitting to having had an affair with author Litsa Dremousis, one of the accusers, whose specific charges he repudiated.[17][18] Dremousis said that "she'd had an affair with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until the stories about his sexual behavior surfaced".[19] She claimed that numerous women had spoken to her about Alexie's behavior.[20][21] Dremousis's response initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on March 1, 2018.[22] The allegations against Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later.[23]
The fallout from these accusations includes the Institute of American Indian Arts renaming its Sherman Alexie Scholarship as the MFA Alumni Scholarship. The blog Native Americans in Children's Literature has deleted or modified all references to Alexie.[24] In February 2018 it was reported that the American Library Association, which had just awarded Alexie its Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir,[25] was reconsidering, and in March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the award and was postponing the publication of a paperback version of the memoir.[26] The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unequivocal message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."[27]
Career
Alexie published his first collection of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, in 1992 through Hanging Loose Press.[10][28] With that success, Alexie stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However, in 1995, he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.[13]
In 2005, Alexie became a founding board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization that is committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth and using media for cultural expression and social change. Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.[29]
Literary works
Alexie reading at the launch of RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Humanities at Arizona State University in 2016
Alexie's stories have been included in several short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been published in various literary magazines and journals, as well as online publications.
Themes
Alexie's poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor.[15] According to Sarah A. Quirk from the Dictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?"[10] The protagonists in most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white American society.[15]
Poetry
Within a year of graduating from college[clarification needed], Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.[30] His career began with the publishing of his first two collections of poetry in 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing.[10] In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express the struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations. Common themes include alcoholism, poverty, and racism.[10] Although he uses humor to express his feelings, the underlying message is very serious. Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by the Beloit Poetry Journal in 1995.
The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)[31] was well received, selling over 10,000 copies.[13] Alexie refers to his writing as "fancydancing,"[14] a flashy, colorful style of competitive powwow dancing. Whereas older forms of Indian dance may be ceremonial and kept private among tribal members, the fancy dance style was created for public entertainment.[14] Alexie compares the mental, emotional, and spiritual outlet that he finds in his writings to the vivid self-expression of the dancers.[15] Leslie Ullman commented on The Business of Fancydancing in the Kenyon Review, writing that Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, pride and metaphysical provocation out of the hard realities...: the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage of his characters."[15]
Alexie's other collections of poetry include:
The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)
Alexie published his first prose work, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1993.[10] The book consists of a series of short stories that are interconnected. Several prominent characters are explored, and they have been featured in later works by Alexie. According to Sarah A. Quirk, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be considered a bildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, moving from relative innocence to a mature level on experience."[10]
Ten Little Indians (2004) is a collection of "nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life," according to Christine C. Menefee of the School Library Journal.[15] In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites have of Native Americans and at the same time shows the Native American characters coming to terms with their own identities."[15]
"Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star−Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"
Novels
In his first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the characters from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, who have grown up together on the Spokane Indian reservation, were teenagers in the short story collection. In Reservation Blues they are now adult men in their thirties.[35] Some of them are now musicians and in a band together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his alertness to a divided audience, Native American and Anglo."[35] Klinkenborg says that Alexie is "willing to risk didacticism whenever he stops to explain the particulars of the Spokane and, more broadly, the Native American experience to his readers."[35]
Indian Killer (1996) is a murder mystery set among Native American adults in contemporary Seattle, where the characters struggle with urban life, mental health, and the knowledge that there is a serial killer on the loose. Characters deal with the racism in the university system, as well as in the community at large, where Indians are subjected to being lectured about their own culture by white professors who are actually ignorant of Indian cultures.[15]
Alexie's young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age story that began as a memoir of his life and family on the Spokane Indian reservation.[15] The novel focuses on a fourteen-year-old Indian named Arnold Spirit. The novel is semi-autobiographical, including many events and elements of Alexie's life.[15] For example, Arnold was born with hydrocephalus, and was teased a lot as a child. The story also portrays events after Arnold's transfer to Reardan High School, which Alexie attended.[15] The novel received great reviews and continues to be a top seller. Bruce Barcott from the New York Times Book Review observed, "Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home."[15]
Flight (2007) also features an adolescent protagonist. The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is a fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Native and European ancestry who has bounced around the foster system in Seattle. The novel explores experiences of the past, as Zits experiences short windows into others' lives after he believes himself to be shot while committing a crime.[15]
Memoir
Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, was released by Hachette in June 2017.[36]Claudia Rowe of The Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that the memoir "pulls readers so deeply into the author's youth on the Spokane Indian Reservation that most will forget all about facile comparisons and simply surrender to Alexie's unmistakable patois of humor and profanity, history and pathos."[37] Alexie cancelled his book tour in support of You Don't Have to Say You Love Me in July 2017 due to the emotional toll that promoting the book was taking. In September 2017, he decided to resume the tour, with some significant changes. As he related to Laurie Hertzel of The Star Tribune, "I'm not performing the book," he said. "I'm getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." He went on to add that he won't be answering any questions that he doesn't want to answer. "I'll put my armor back on," he said.[38]
Films
In 1998 Alexie's film Smoke Signals gained considerable attention.[15] Alexie based the screenplay on his short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and characters and events from a number of Alexie's works make appearances in the film.[15] The film was directed by Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho) with a predominantly Native American production team and cast.[13] The film is a road movie and buddy film, featuring two young Indians, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the reservation on a road trip to retrieve the body of Victor's dead father (Gary Farmer).[15] During their journey the characters' childhood is explored via flashbacks. The film took top honors at the Sundance Film Festival.[15] It received an 86% and "fresh" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.[39]
The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity, gay identity, cultural involvement vs blood quantum, living on the reservation or off it, and other issues related to what makes someone a "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice to leave the reservation and make his living performing for predominantly-white audiences. Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire in "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban gay man with a white partner. The death of a peer brings the protagonist home to the reservation, where he reunites with his friends from his childhood and youth. The film is unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely female crew to produce the film. Many of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real events in their lives. It received a 57 percent and "rotten" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.[40]
Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "10-4". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Double Wit
2011
Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Double Wit". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System
2011
Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
16D
2011
Alexie, Sherman. "16D". Narrative Magazine (Poems of the Week: 2010–2011).
In 2012, Arizona's HB 2281 removed Alexie's works, along with those of others, from Arizona school curriculum. Alexie's response:
Let's get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.[42]
Style
Alexie's influences for his literary works do not rely solely on traditional Indian forms. He "blends elements of popular culture, Indian spirituality, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reservation life to create his characters and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk.[10] Alexie's work often includes humor as well. According to Quirk, he does this as a "means of cultural survival for American Indians—survival in the face of the larger American culture's stereotypes of American Indians and their concomitant distillation of individual tribal characteristics into one pan-Indian consciousness."[10]
Karen Louise Erdrich is a Native American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
The Coeur d'Alene Tribe are a Native American tribe and one of five federally recognized tribes in the state of Idaho.
Smoke Signals is a 1998 coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Chris Eyre from a screenplay by Sherman Alexie, based on Alexie's short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). The film won several awards and accolades, and was well received at numerous film festivals.
Jim Boyd was a Native American singer-songwriter, actor, and member of the Jim Boyd Band on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington. Boyd performed in several groups, including XIT, Greywolf, and Winterhawk. Boyd performed four songs with lyrics by Sherman Alexie on the soundtrack for the 1998 movie Smoke Signals, and also appeared in Alexie's 2002 film The Business of Fancydancing.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a 1993 collection of interconnected short stories by Sherman Alexie. The characters and stories in the book, particularly "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", provided the basis of Alexie's screenplay for the film Smoke Signals.
The Business of Fancydancing is a 2002 film written and directed by Sherman Alexie. It is loosely based on his 1992 book of the same name, a collection of stories and poems.
Adrian C. Louis was an American author. Hailing from Nevada, Louis was a member of Lovelock Paiute tribe who lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has taught at Oglala Lakota College.
Ten Little Indians is a 2004 short story collection by Sherman Alexie. The collection contains nine stories all of which focus on the Spokane tribe of Native Americans in Washington state.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie, from the perspective of a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior," a 14-year-old promising cartoonist. The book is about Junior's life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision to go to a nearly all-white public high school away from the reservation. The graphic novel includes 65 comic illustrations that help further the plot.
Reservation Blues is a 1995 novel by American writer Sherman Alexie, a citizen of the Spokane Tribe and descendant of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe.
Timothy Patrick Barrus, also known as Tim Barrus, is an American author and social worker who is best known for having published three "memoirs" between 2000 and 2004 under the pseudonym Nasdijj, by which he presented himself as a Navajo. The books were critically acclaimed, and Nasdijj received several literary awards and recognition from major institutions. His "memoirs" dealt in part with issues of two adopted children who suffered from severe problems.
Elizabeth Woody is an American Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama artist, author, and educator. In March 2016, she was the first Native American to be named poet laureate of Oregon by Governor Kate Brown.
Gloria Bird is a Native American poet, essayist, teacher and a member of the Spokane Tribe in Washington State. Gloria spreads her work not only by writing for her but all Native American people. In her work, Bird’s main priority is to question and diminish harmful stereotypes placed on Native American people. Her focus in on educating about her community in accurate scripts without exploiting the culture.
The Native Writers' Circle of the Americas (NWCA) is an organization of writers who identify as being Native American, First Nations, or of Native American ancestry.
Tiffany Midge is a Native American poet, editor, and author, who is a Hunkpapa Lakota enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Wellpinit is an unincorporated community in Stevens County, Washington, United States. Wellpinit has a post office with ZIP code 99040. It is the setting of the young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. The population of the ZIP Code Tabulation Area for 99040 was 930 at the 2000 census.
Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, and Stephen Graham Jones. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.
Eric Gansworth is a Haudenosaunee novelist, poet and visual artist from New York. He is a citizen of the Onondaga Nation and Tuscarora descendant.
Esther Belin, who has work published under Esther G. Belin, is a Diné multimedia artist, writer, poet, writing instructor, and addiction counselor. The Before Columbus Foundation chose From the Belly of My Beauty for the American Book Award after the book was published in 1999. She was one of the editors of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature that was published in 2021. It is on the Lists of Best Books, 2010-2023 of the American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL).
1 2 "National Book Awards– 2007". National Book Foundation (NBF). Retrieved 2012-04-15. (With acceptance speech by Alexie, interview with Alexie, and other material, partly replicated for all five Young People's Literature authors and books.)
↑ Melissa J. Brotton, ed. (2016). Ecotheology in the Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Divine and Nature. Lexington Books. p.2. ISBN9781498527941.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
