Sherman Alexie's Superman And Me

Directions: The BIG TIDE has been marked for you. Highlight the small tide in each paragraph using the following color code: topic sentence, important evidence, detailed explanation, ending/concluding sentence. Prompt: In Sherman Alexie’s essay “Superman and Me,” Alexie uses an extended metaphor to explain the connection between himself and the fictional character Superman.

Themes for Writers, edited by Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014, pp. 63-65.

Sherman Alexie demonstrates the influence that negative expectations can have upon people, and the importance of growing beyond those expectations in his article, “Superman and Me”, published in the Los Angeles Times. Through personal experience, he is able to illustrate how the hopeless mentality among his people thrived and tried to deter those who thought and lived differently. He utilizes repetition to emphasize the importance of his actions when he “refused to fail”, deciding to be relentless in his pursuit of knowledge despite the criticism from others. (496) Alexie accurately portrays how there will always be a mentality that prevails in our “paragraph” or corner of society, that may hinder people from living differently and reaching

Everyone knows Superman, the world-saving superhero, but he is just fiction. Another man named Sherman Alexie is a world-saver too. He had a tough childhood on an Indian reservation, but he pushed on and is now a world famous author. In one of his essays, “Superman and Me”, he talks about how he is like Superman in many ways. Alexie is very similar to Superman because they both try no matter if they are told to fail, both were “aliens”, and both are saving people’s lives.

Have you ever heard about superman or sherman alexie alexie they both have ways that they have ways that they are in common and they both have ways that they are different .Why don't we just go find out how they are different and they are alike so let’s go explore a little about them.

Sherman Alexie, an Indian author who won numerous awards for his work, had very strong and relatable points in his essay, "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me". The essay told of how he was born into poverty and strived to become successful even though most of his fellow Indian classmates aimed to be below average in the class room. Alexie refused to fail, and I completely agree with many points that he made in this essay.

Growing up I would always expect that life would be easy and basketball would be the key to success but in my case, my father would always be busy to even teach me how to dribble or shoot. I learned all of that myself and by watching him play. Even when I tried teaching myself and even thinking to myself that I was good enough,but I was never close to my father. Once in a while I would get my chance to play with him and I would always give it all. “Let's play one on one”, my father said. “lets go!, my ball first”, I replied with excitement. I would always do my best but I would never come close. the score would always be around 16-3.

The lights flicker on as I sit up lazily in my chair. I try to focus on the television screen as it goes black. I attempt to recollect my thoughts of what I had just seen. Then it came back to me, I was watching another one of those same cheesy videos about someone who had overcome failure to accomplish something great. I didn’t give the video any thought because all I could think about was the 8th-grade boy’s basketball tryouts after school. I was excited about the upcoming season and was eager to join the team. I watched and played basketball every day, so I felt confident in my ability to play the game the right way. As tryouts began I noticed the other kids playing extremely well so I exerted myself to step up my game and play their style.

The heading of sherman Alexie article “Superman and Me” was the main reason I showed interest in the article in the first place. I have a strong interest for superheros so when I saw that Superman was involved I was naturally curious. Sherman tells the story of how he learned to read by trying to read a superman comic book. He does not remember the book in detail, but he does remember one scene where Superman is breaking down a door and Sherman would try to read the book by saying what was happening in the panel. When i read he was from an Indian Reservation I automatically knew that he had faced hardships since he was little, as he exclaimed that his people were expected to be intelligent and stay quiet. Sherman although was determined to

“You gain knowledge, which helps to succeed and survive in this world and nobody will ever take that from you,” my older brother once said to me when I questioned him about literary. Ever since, literary has been vital in my life from Nepal to United States. Though, my literary journey from elementary school to college would not have continued without my brother who inspired and encouraged me through his hard work. I spent a lot of time with him growing up, but importantly, we shared a room in which I witnessed his ruthless desire to succeed in literature, despite the fact that he was a poor learner.

One of the hardest challenges of my life was the constant struggle to try and get better in the most important thing in my life, Basketball. I started back in the 8th grade, as it being something to do and because I was a fat kid. I was so awful it wasn’t really funny, like turnover on every play kind of bad. I hate to lose and I hate feeling like everyone is better. On top of that I didn’t necessarily have the best supporters to help me, the only one I ever got a good job was from my dad he would always tell me i’m doing good and giving me advice since he was a very good player back in his prime. I remember and always will remember these words “All these kids you see are blessed with talent, you are too but they have all the skills already and you need to work hard to get them but, Hard work beats talent, when talent fails to work hard.”. I never really understood the meaning of those words until two years ago. But back to

I have to struggle to get to where I’m going, so once I get there, my family and I won’t have to struggle anymore. It was the second game of the season, November 22nd to be exact. We were up against Frazier high school. The second quarter was about to start, and all I could remember was my coach saying, “Do whatever it takes to win. They ain’t gona give us nothing. We have to go out there and take it.” To me, that meant risk it all for the sake of a win. I’m sure I was the smallest player on the floor, but my heart was huge. I was courageous to what most thought was a fault, but I saw different. I was built on sacrifice, so that’s what I believed in. After attempting to score, we missed, and Frazier grabbed the rebound and started a fastbreak. I knew I wasn’t tall, but I was tough, so I did what I was told, which was to do anything necessary to win. As the opposing player made his way to the basket that I was willing to protect at all costs, I stepped in front of him and took a charge. In that instant, I had a concussion as well as a broken collarbone. I had always been serious about my school work, and I have always prided myself in my academics, but it was in the moment that my freshman year of high school basketball season, of which I was a varsity starter, was over that I took my frame of mind, in terms of school, to a

Few things motivate students more than chances to connect their learning to the real world, build on their interests, and sharing what they know and can do with a public audience (Cervone, 2010). Once reluctant readers feel secure with their teacher and peers, they are more likely to take risks, try to excel, bring their out-of-school experiences to the discussion, and succeed with new found confidence in literary. Contrary to labels and negative attitudes reluctant readers experience, the person inside the student that is often overlooked, wants to give the teacher what they want. These students should be given the opportunity to independently read books that will draw upon their experiences in class, allow them to cultivate their considerable background knowledge about a topic, enhance their growing strategic repertoire and understanding of how texts work, to make sense of a complex text and to connect that text to other texts they haves read. When expected and equipped to thrive in literacy reluctant readers will enact the new identity as knowledgeable, confident, resilient readers, undaunted in the face of complexity, interested in the outcome of the book, and able to bring a repertoire of text-based, discipline-specific, problem-solving strategies to bear on their reading. Martin Maehr and Larry Braskam say it best, "People do what they believe they can and what they believe is worth doing.”

The expectations that others place on us help us form our own expectation of ourselves, we can also choose to form our own goals. Granted that, Sherman Alexie had written a story about how he was inspired to become a writer. Beginning with learning to read on his own, then taking a stand against his society’s beliefs. For that reason, Sherman has encouraged other native American children to be more ambitious. In fact, on Superman and Me Sherman has proven, the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can be changed with someone’s efforts alone. Because he doesn’t believe failure is a permanent state.

Books are essential to everyday life. They provide entertainment to the masses. They allow students to learn without teachers. They can contain anything that someone might want to read. Books have shaped my life and made me the person I am today. Just as Sherman Alexie found his calling as a child in books and reading, books taught me things that teachers couldn’t and were there for my learning when no one else could be.