Sherman Alexie On The Greek

In the short story “Superman and Me” which was written by Sherman Alexie, details the autobiography of Alexie’s life when he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. In the beginning, Alexie introduces his audience with a bundle of information and vigorous conflicts that he had learned to overcome. Alexie’s first confrontation came the very day he was born, when someone discovered “he was born with water in his brain and not expected to survive.” Once Alexie conquered this deadly situation, he discovered this unique passion towards reading. At the age of 3, he became very peculiar about a certain comic book called Superman, and that’s when he opened it up, analyzed it and became deeply affectionate about the power knowledge. Alexie also seemed to pick up this intelligence through his father, as he was one of the only Indians to attend a catholic school, and obtain an education. Alexie’s next additional challenge began the day he started school. He was teased by his classmates, degraded by his teachers and abandoned by his fellow community members all because he’s smart Indian. Also, the author begins to explain how the Indians on the reservation saw failure as this normal thing, they accepted the fact that they weren’t supposed to get a decent education. Alexie seemed to always find a way around diversity even when it looked like the whole world was against him because he didn’t follow the stereotypical “dumb” Indian boy. Peoples arrogance and crude remarks towards him is

When she knocked on the door, the women at bridge club unsuccessfully hid from her. When she went to the window, she spotted a few of them and at first did not understand that they were hiding from her. She slowly realized they were trying to avoid her. When she got back home she told Minny, “They made me stand there like I was the vacuum salesman” (Taylor, 2011). This is just one example in the movie of prejudice that is bordering on discrimination.

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

This poem is written from the perspective of an African-American from a foreign country, who has come to America for the promise of equality,

As African Americans gained civil rights, a new generation, eager to break away from past horrors, emerged while others remained chained to the specter of past inequality and poverty. The story scrutinizes the intense tensions and trains that were created as these two conflicting worlds came together.

Since the story was set around the time when the racial discrimination was going on, the narrator had the hatred and fear at the same time, for the white people. When he recalled what his mom said to

As they are telling the story they begin to describe a real life situation they personally experience towards discrimination and stereotyping. According to Hsiang, “They believe relationships should remain within the community, and may even opt to speak their parents’ native language over English in public” (342). This is an example of racism, however, as they say relationships should remain within the community they're only pertaining to their race. They're explaining how they may rather talk a native language from their parents instead of English. They're discriminating against English language at this point. Furthermore, Staples states “One day, rushing into the office of a magazine I was writing for with a deadline story in hand, I was mistaken for a burglar” (348). Staples explains how the store manager felt threatened because he was a different race that came into the office so he reported him as a burglar which is racism. He also couldn't prove who he was even though he was just an innocent man that was rushing after writing a deadline story. As people come upon a different race, they feel threatened and immediately assume they're bad people when they could be the sweetest person you could ever

Author Sherman Alexie, in his pieces of literature “Indian Education” and “Superman and Me”, he recounts his endeavors, he faced as a child living on the Spokane and Coeur D’ Alene Indian Reservation. In each story he uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to convey to the reader the importance of these experiences. He discusses how difficult it was to be considered an “average Indian”, but at the same time trying to receive the best education as possible. Alexie’s purpose was to transmit the idea that, an Indian boy could strive and succeed at getting an education. He adopts a sentimental and in tone in order to appeal to similar struggles and experiences in his young adult readers face as they go through school.

Alexie uses first hand experiences all throughout his article to depict the reality of American Indian’s lives. By appealing to the pathos, he gives his readers the ability to empathize with him, experiencing both the trials and triumphs. His use of analogies provides his audience with visuals that portray his experiences more accurately. When Alexie writes about himself in

Throughout the history of the Native Americans, no one has suffered more because of the white man’s atrocity than the children of the Indians. Most of them, if not all, were taken away from their reservation to live in a boarding school. Whether they liked it or not, they were to follow and obey the school’s rules and regulations even though they deemed it unforgiving. In her poem, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways,” Louise Erdrich meticulously depicted the sufferings of the Indian children at a boarding school created just for them to better assimilate with the white man’s culture. The speaker of the poem and the imagery used to describe this wonderful heart-warming literature made it possible to convey the real existence of the pain

Sherman Alexie's "On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City" is a free verse poem that gives voice to Native American resentment and contempt. It is composed in a series of quatrains, with the last line of the poem standing alone, symbolizing the poet himself who feels alienated a stranger in his own land, now overrun by an "enemy." This paper will examine the poem's use of meter, imagery and symbolism, and give an interpretation of Alexie's thoughts and feelings in "On the Amtrak."

Native American families were frequently placed in little, ruined reservations, endorsed to give up their childhood to receive inadequate schooling, a constant threat of kidnapping, and even removing entire families off their land where they have called home for hundreds of years prior. Louise’s father and mother both worked at Indian boarding schools, giving the reader the sense that she really was passionate about her writing of this poem in more ways than one. She truly gives the underlying insight to the boarding schools and the treatment of her people’s way of life, which was a systematic and legal genocide

In Jeannette Armstrong’s poem, History Lesson, she writes in perspective of Indigenous people reacting to the first encounters with European settlers. Historically, Indigenous people did not have a positive encounter with the first settlers due to their clash of beliefs and values of how communities and structures should run. Instead, they had many disagreements which caused the partial destruction of their whole culture. It is clear that Armstrong uses the theme of history to portray the destruction that the first European settlers had on the Indigenous way of life through various points in history. Armstrong imbeds the theme of history throughout her poem to further emphasize her stance on the assimilation of the Indigenous people with the restricting and destructive effects the early settlers had on them throughout history.

Between 1790 and 1920 it was a tough time for the Indians. During that period Native Americans were forced to convert to the European-American Culture. Their whole life changed, the way of living, religion, and especially their children’s future. It was wrong of Americans to convert natives into a different society that they saw fit and not letting them express their own culture and treating them as an unworthy society.

The store I choose to do my Close-reading on is “On the Amtrak from Boston to New York.” I chose this piece because I think it was a very interesting and in class there was many discussion on what people though about it and I want to give mine. As I first read this poem I sensed anger and negativity from the writer maybe build up from over the years with dealing with maybe dealing with people his life. When he talks about hearing how Don Henley saved Walden, he says, “If Don Henley’s brothers and sisters and mothers and father hadn’t come here in the first place then nothing would need to be saved” (57). I really think that this shows how the Indians felt about the white people coming in and taking clam over things that weren’t there and it