A Summary Of Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie the author of the essay "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" was born and raised on a Spokane Indian Reservation. Growing up, his family did not have a lot of money, yet today Alexie is known as one of the most prominent Native American writers. Alexie reminisces on his childhood when he first taught himself how to read. In the essay "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" Sherman Alexie suggests, that for Native Americans reading is the key to education and education is the key to prosperity in life.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” the narrator portrays both internal and external conflicts throughout his journey to success. Arnold Junior Spirit is a fourteen-year-old boy who believes that in order to pursue his dream he will have to choose between staying in his Spokane Indian reservation or moving out to an all-white school in the neighboring farm town. But things aren’t as easy as they seem when Junior tries moving schools because he know has to be part of two communities. Many conflicts form within the Spokane Indian reservation and the Spokane Indian reservation as well comes into conflict with the white community.

Sherman Alexie, in “Indian Education” tells his experiences in school on the reservation. Some of his teachers did not treat him very good and did not try to understand him. In his ninth grade year he collapsed. A teacher assumed that he had been drinking just because he was Native American. The teacher said, “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sherman Alexie didn’t listen to the negatives in school. He persevered and became valedictorian of his school.

After having read the essays by Sherman Alexie and Stephen King, it is fair to say that there are a fair amount of similarities given that the context is different in each. Alexie’s piece was on how the writer saved himself and aims to do so for those around him. While King’s Piece gives advice on the benefits of reading, especially for a writer and doing something one loves. One notion mainly expressed in both essays is one should read as much as possible, whatever is possible, wherever and whenever.

Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his

Authors write for many reasons; most often because they want to tell a story. This is definitely the case with Sherman Alexie, “a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker known for witty and frank explorations of the lives of contemporary Native Americans.” He grew up on the Spokane and Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservations, and has devoted much of his adult life to telling stories of his life there. Alexie expertly uses language and rhetorical devices to convey the intensity and value of his experiences.

Growing up as a Native American boy on a reservation, Sherman Alexie was not expected to succeed outside of his reservation home. The expectations for Native American children were not very high, but Alexie burst out of the stereotype and expectations put by white men. Young Native Americans were not expected to overcome their stereotypes and were forced to succumb to low levels of reading and writing “he was expected to fail in a non-Indian world” (Alexie 3), but Alexie was born with a passion for reading and writing, so much so that he taught himself to read at age three by simply looking at images in Marvel comics and piecing the words and pictures together. No young Native American had made it out of his reservation to become a successful writer like he did. This fabricates a clear ethos for Alexie, he is a perfect underdog in an imperfect world.

Sherman Alexie's essay discusses the impact that reading has had on his life and how his Native American race has discouraged him from pursuing an education. Alexie states, "We were Indian children expected to be stupid. Most live up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside," (Alexie 111). Alexie expresses the idea that his race was expected to act a certain way. Indian children were expected to be unintelligent and not pursue an education. Since Indian children were pressured by the community to act a certain way, they conformed to the confinements and regulations of society. This shows that Indians gave in to what people expected them to be and that there was a fear of education to the Native Americans. The fear of education was due to the fact that if Indian children learned and processed certain information, they might act differently than expected or deemed right. As a child, Alexie was constantly looked down upon due to his intelligence. His intelligence garnered much attention towards him and he was known as an oddity. His curiosity of education led him towards the pursuit of education despite what people said or thought of him. This demonstrates that though a community can hinder one's drive or motivation towards an education, the individual is responsible for pursuing an education. After an education is pursued, the

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were the odd one out? In Sherman Alexie’s novel Indian Killer there are many references to the cultures and traditions of Indians and how they are different to others. Alexie also brings up some of the major points of being a true native American and how some are just “wannabes” as he calls them in the novel. He also goes in depth with some struggles of being an Indian and how life is different between Indians and whites. The culture of the Indians in this novel play a major role in the novel as it is how the Indian killer starts killing because of all the racism. Alexie uses many references to

Sherman Alexie choose to reflect on his experience through the education system with the purpose of highlighting the mistreatment of Native American both inside and outside their own culture in “Indian Education”. This was accomplished through the structure of the narrative and use of techniques throughout it. For example, Alexie structures his writing into short, segmented parts based on his level of education going from the first grade to post-graduation. This type of structure allows for a fast-paced narrative where only the most impactful moments of Alexie’s education are shown. Moments such as him being ostracized by those at his reservation because he, “kissed the white girl, I felt the good-byes I was saying to my entire tribe”(Alexie par. 43) or when he overcame his bully and “the little warrior in me roared to life and knocked Frenchy to the ground” (Alexie par. 4) all demonstrated how his culture affected his life. Furthermore, Alexie uses a combination of dark humor and irony throughout the narrative in order to help explain his purpose. In the eighth grade, Alexie makes fun of the bulimic girls in his school by saying “Give me your lunch if you’re just going to throw it up”(Alexie par.51) when the irony of the situation is that Alexie is starving because he lives in poverty while these girls are wasting their food by throwing it up. Sherman Alexie's way of storytelling through short, fast-paced, segmented parts intertwined with dark humor and irony helps achieve his purpose for writing the narrative which was that Native Americans were not only persecuted outside of their culture, but

Sherman Alexie the author of the essay "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" was born and raised on a Spokane Indian Reservation. Growing up his family did not have a lot of money, yet today Alexie is known as one of the most prominent Native American writers. Alexie reminisces on his childhood when he first taught himself how to read. In the essay "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" Sherman Alexie suggests, that for Native Americans reading is the key to education and education is the key to prosperity in life.

Within Alexie’s story, he described the hard life of growing up as an Indian. Growing up as an Indian was a big challenge due to the fact that the world already had a set perspective on their lifestyle (which was that Indians were born illiterate and were made for one purpose and one purpose only, which was to hunt). The first literary device mentioned was conflict, where Sherman was in a pool of doubt and said “as Indian children, we were expected to fail.” This piece of evidence relates to conflict (person v.s. society) because the children were consistently looked down upon with their education and always told that “they couldn’t do it.” Society had placed them with a self conflict that makes them constantly doubt themselves when in reality the majority of them are educated and have a bigger picture in life. Furthermore the education changed overtime because society allowed to view these Indians as people rather than just

The non-Indians and Indians alike alienated young Alexie at school. In order to conform to subservient expectations, smart Indian children were bullied into not actively talking or participating in class further emphasizing “Indian children who were expected to be stupid” (Alexie). Teachers would ignore the peer pressuring and bullying happening around them. Because the non-Indians actively denied the Indian kids of participating in school, they could not assimilate. Despite the persistence of non-Indians and Indians to deny Alexie the right to learn, he persevered and overcame adversity. His father inspired him “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” paving the road to the rest of his life (Alexie). Alexie assimilated to the American way of life, but he did not forget his roots. Contrary to what he originally thought the direction his life was heading toward,

Reading was his outlet from the negative environment he grew up in, but also the way out. Sherman Alexie also uses selective diction to shape the struggles of young Native Americans in the broken school system. Words like sullen, defeated, resist, refuse and arrogant create the negative atmosphere of the Native American students are face with everyday. Discouraged and already defeated students are the kind Sherman Alexie tries to save because nobody bothers with them, a lost

There has been a long pattern of mistreatment of people of color over the course of American History, including the forced relocation of the majority of the Native American population onto reserves. In Superman and Me, Native American author Sherman Alexie writes about his experiences growing up on an Indian Reservation in Washington, and how breaking away from the norms of his culture affected his life. The people around him celebrated their culture, but hid it in the presence of white people, actions presumably formed from years of discrimination to avoid drawing attention to themselves. However, instead of remaining quiet and reserved in the presence of white people, Alexie chose to be different. He states that they were “Indian children who were expected to be stupid”, and “expected to fail in the non-Indian world”, but Alexie refused to be constrained by these expectations (Alexie 17). He was an avid reader, with a purpose. Alexie says, “I was trying to save my life” (18). For him, a life on an Indian Reservation was one where he would never be able to reach his full potential. He had to get out to save