Sherman Alexie – Writing for his Culture

We are all immigrants to this land, unless of course we are Native American.  To the Native American, reduced to an unwilling minority, the fabled American Dream is a vivid nightmare that continues to plague them.  Two of the stories we read in this class about Native Americans told sad stories of the Native American clash with the dominant culture: the authorities, the government. In deciding what to research for my second paper I felt I wanted to know more about the feelings of Native American writers and since I was familiar with the work of Sherman Alexie, I chose to find out more about him and how he came to tell his sometimes haunting, sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking stories. In researching this fascinating, writer, I wanted to explore his thoughts on the unique narrative of the Indian minority and its importance as well as how he views his role as a Native American/Indian multicultural writer.

Sherman Alexie, born in October 1966, grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington.   A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, he claims to be a “13/16ths” Indian.  He says that he prefers being called Indian rather than Native American, considering Native American a name created by “guilty white liberals.”  He was born hydrocephalic, and was not expected to live, or if he did live, expected to be mentally damaged, but her survived, much to everyone’s surprise.  He was frequently ill as a child, and he read to pass the time, reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath at age five, according to Alexie.  His precocious reading skills made him an outcast at the reservation school and he chose to go to high school in Reardon, Washington, where he was the only Indian, “except the mascot.”  He was an excellent student and star basketball player.  He graduated with honors and went on to Gonzaga University in Spokane.

He planned to study medicine at the university, but found he didn’t have the constitution for it – he frequently passed out in anatomy class.  A teacher suggested he change his major to literature and after graduating from Washington State University with a degree in American Studies, he began to write about the Indians on the “rez”, first in award winning poems, then short stories and finally in his first screenplay made from his collection of short stories called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 

The movie was called Smoke Signals, and although it was a small independent film, it attracted much attention at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, and became an unexpected mainstream movie. 

One of the very interesting articles I found on Alexie and his writing was his essay, “When the Story Stolen Is Your Own,” in Time Magazine in February of 2006.  In this essay he speaks about another essay, which had won multiple prestigious prizes.  The essay, published in Esquire magazine, was called “The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams” and was written by Nasdijj, a writer whose supposed life history was amazingly similar to Alexie’s.  Alexie’s accusations were dismissed at the time, and when the writer was eventually exposed after another scam (by none less that Oprah), he says he felt vindicated.  It is Alexie’s statements about his concerns about this writer that I found so pertinent to immigrant/multicultural studies:  “His lies matter because he has cynically co-opted as a literary style the very real injustices caused by very real American aggression that destroyed very real tribes.”   Alexie sees this as a continuation of the assault on his culture by white men (the dominant culture) who are invalidating multicultural literature by insinuating that anyone can write it, therefore it is not real or authentic.  He feels his role is not only to write as a multiculturalist, but to keep the writing relevant, and pure and honest, and therefore useful, by exposing fraud.

Alexie also feels that Native writers have certain responsibilities.  In an interview by E. K. Caldwell, he spoke of the responsibility he feels, “… to tell the truth.  And to act as role models.  We are more than just writers.  We are storytellers.  We are spokespeople.  We are cultural ambassadors.”  He feels that the role of the native writer encompasses even greater responsibility, “if you are going to write about racism, you should be very careful not to be racist yourself.”

Not to imply that Sherman Alexie does not feel that a native writer can’t offend those he feels need waking up.  Although he says that he tries never to write anything that would hurt or embarrass his family, he does like to get under the skin of some.  When being interviewed by Bob Capriccioso in the online journal, identity theory.com, about his second film in the, The Business of Fancy Dancing , which explores a gay theme, he was asked about the tribal reaction.  In this interview with the radical publication, he declares Indians “rednecks,” then softens it with, “Indian people are very conservative.  I don’t think you would really tell the social difference between the average reservation Indian and, you know, white farmers.”   Elaborating further about the backlash he gets about some of his writing, Alexie tells of being accused of “not being Indian”, or “not being Indian enough.”   In this same publication he reveals that when an elder of his tribe expressed to him how evil he thought gay people were, and used the bible as reference, he reminded the elder that the bible had been quoted many times to justify violence against the Indians.  Alexie feels that his job as a Native writer is to “write about the way we live,” not about a romanticized ideal of what an Indian should be, another function of his role as a multiculturalist.  And if he needs to shake the people up to make them aware of the fact that there are “real Indians” who are gay, and might even have AIDS, he will write about that, too that’s just part of the job.

I look forward to more work from Sherman Alexie as he continues to keep us – Indians, conservatives and white liberals alike, informed about the state of our culture, our sins past and present, and ourselves as Americans.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “When the Story Stolen Is Your Own”, Time, Feb. 6, 2006 http://www.time.com/time/archive/Preview/0,10987,1154221,00.html

Caldwell, E. K. Interview http://www.English.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/alexie/general.htm

Capriccioso, Robert.  Interview. Sherman Alexie. March 23, 2003.
http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/alexie_interview.html