LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Poetry Presentation, spring 2006

Thursday, 23 March

Poetry: Sherman Alexie, "Vision (2)"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Crystal Reppert

From the essay “When the Story Stolen Is Your Own” (Time magazine, Feb. 6, 2006)
I did not write "The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams." But raised fragile and poor on the destitute Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State, I published a story, This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, in Esquire in 1993. My story, which features an autobiographical character named Thomas Builds-the-Fire who suffers a brain injury at birth and experiences visionary seizures into his adulthood, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and the basis for the film Smoke Signals, which won the Audience Award at Sundance in 1998.

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. (born October 7, 1966 in Spokane, Washington) is an award-winning and prolific writer (of novels, short stories, poems, and screenplays) who lives in Seattle, Washington. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a modern Native American (he is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian) in the United States.

Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation (in Wellpinit, Washington), about 50 miles northwest of the city of Spokane. Despite a childhood of medical difficulties, he was a precocious reader who quickly became frustrated with schools on the reservation and opted to attend a nearby (all white) high school. He went on to attend Gonzaga University before transferring to Washington State University and becoming one of the first members of his tribe to graduate from college. He struggled with alcoholism in his time at college until being inspired to go sober by his initial literary successes.

Alexie's writing is marked by harsh depictions of reservation life, autobiographical elements, colorful use of humor, political outspokenness, seamless invocation of history and popular culture, and social commentary. He has also dabbled in stand-up comedy and music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie

 

Objective 1

To define the “minority concept" as a power relationship modeled by some ethnic groups’ historical relation to the dominant American culture.

Many  American luxuries are enticing.  Easy to be drawn away from own culture, however, full participation is blocked due to continuing prejudice.

1a. “Involuntary (or forced) participation”

(Unlike the dominant immigrant culture, ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture. Thus the original "social contract" of Native Americans and African Americans contrasts with that of European Americans, Asian Americans, or most Latin Americans, and the consequences of "choice" or "no choice" echo down the generations.)

How is it possible for the Native Americans to avoid forced participation?

Objective 3

To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people. Yet they defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

 

Questions:

“Indian leaning against the back wall” -- is this survival?

 

Is it helpful to the cause to keep writing about Indian Failures?  Why not highlight the success stories? 

 

Would an Indian writer have received all this recognition writing about success rather than what white people expect them to write about?

 

Awards

1991: Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship

1992: National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year for The Business of Fancydancing

Slipstream Chapbook Contest Winner for I Would Steal Horses

1993: Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award

Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award Citation

PEN/Hemingway Award: Best First Book of Fiction Citation Winner for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Great Lakes College Association: Best First Book of Fiction Award

1994: Bram Stoker Award Nominee for "Distances"

1996: Before Columbus Foundation: American Book Award

Morgan Murray Prize for Reservation Blues

Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40

1998: Tacoma Public Library Annual Literary Award

New York Times Notable Book for Indian Killer

People Magazine: Best of Pages

Winner, 17th Annual World Championship Poetry Bout

1999: New Yorker: 20 Writers for the 21st Century