The Joy Of Reading And Writing : Superman And Me

There are some children, like the Indian boy in the short story that will simply not be given a chance to learn how to read and must adapt quickly to survive. Alexie took his fate into his own hands at an early age. Although the author never states the age of the boy, we are to imagine he is grade school age. Alexie states that the boy’s father had an extensive book collection from which he had taught himself how to read, but never mentions if the father had helped his son to learn to read. I imagine the father was too busy trying to support his family by working minimum wage jobs and finding work where he could find it. Needless to say, Alexie adapted well given his situation. These experiences give him accreditation with the reader,

Alexie's father was the reason he began to read which later became his passion. His father loved to read, and even though they did not have a ton of money, his father went out of his way to stock up on books. One-day Alexie decided to pick up one of his father's books and taught himself how to read. Before that, he had never read a book and could not even understand the words. A paragraph intrigued him; each house on the reservation was a paragraph, and each member of his family was a paragraph. The family members were separate people; however, there were still related making all of them together an essay. Then there was the Superman comic book he picked up one day. Although he could not read the panels of words the illustrations told the story. He would make up a story to go with the pictures and pretend to read the panels. Looking back at these times Alexie realized how lucky he was growing up with all these resources to teach

Alexie spoke of his path of becoming a writer from his childhood that there were blockades he had to overcome against Indians while showing how easy it is to give up as with those around him, yet he then speaks to all youths, both Indian and non-Indian about their power to become whatever they want yet how society at the same time has already crushed the spirits of some. King, on the other hand, persuades aspiring writers that a lot of reading is necessary and time must always somehow be made to do so, yet he then talks about his son Owen who aspired to become a saxophone player but even with all the time and effort, he was not joyful given that he only put necessary time towards his lessons and practice. The basic idea is that we should do things that we love as that is necessary in life and the things we love will not make us feel stressed or be

In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Superman and Me,” Alexie writes about his life as an Indian child growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. He depicts his life from when he was three years old, living on the reservation, up to his current self, as an adult writer who frequently visits that reservation. He primarily describes his interest in reading and how it has changed his life for the better.

While Alexie states his voice by using metaphor, he emphasizes the meaning of reading repeatedly in his essay. He stresses how he strives to read variety of books, and he records that,” I read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes… I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs” (18). Alexie lists out all the material he has read with the same sentence structure, yet he does not conclude all these things in one sentence. He exemplifies his passion to reading, for he tries to save his life. Due to his parallel repetition, Alexie impresses the audience by these

In his essay, Rodriguez shows all four characteristics of expressive writing which are self-definition, emotional responses, the expression of values, and subjective language. Rodriguez defines himself as someone who struggles with the validity of reading and learning to read. He states books were “unquestioned”. Rodriguez asked, “What was the connection between reading and learning? (172)? “Did one learn something only by reading it .“(172) He was made to think he should value books as a friend when he found reading a “chore”. Still, he values the opinion of others and “basked in the praise” by reading for academic approval. His narration of learning to enjoy reading is an emotional roller coaster from the loneliness of reading to the pleasurable joy he learned through experience. Thus the title of the book makes sense,

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.

In “Indian Education,” Alexie uses many different anecdotes, from each grade to convey both its intensity and value to him. One example of his use of anecdotes is in the second grade, where his teacher, “gave the class a spelling test but set me aside and gave me a test designed for junior high students,” and when he “spelled all of the words right, she crumpled up the paper and made [him] eat it.” His use of explaining this experience explains the intensity of his situation by saying how he had to eat the paper, and the value of this is implied, showing that he understood that he was clearly smarter than other students. Another example of his use of anecdotes, is when he is in the ninth grade, and says, “my white friends revived me and prepared to take me to the emergency room where doctors would later diagnose my diabetes,” which is followed by a racial remark made by a teacher. This shows the harshness of his predicament, and the value of him learning that “dark skin didn’t make two men brothers,” which meant that he may be different like him, but they weren’t connected because of it. Alexie uses anecdotes in “Superman and Me” to show to the reader his experiences growing up to read. He shows this when he says, “At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that Superman comic book… I pretend to

Alexie’s narrator describes a story of assumption and discrimination through not only the thoughts of the narrator and his life, but also how the narrator explains his thoughts and the diction he uses as he recalls certain moments. Throughout the passage, the narrator demonstrates how isolated he is, not only in the country where hia people are shunned, but also with others that are in a situation similar to his. Not only is there a feeling of loneliness and isolation, but also guilt of relation to how Indians are being treated today. Through stories of realistic fiction, Alexie addresses serious issues that others fail to.

As he grew up to become a writer, we see pain in the story he tells. “I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life” (pg.18). Alexie wanted to be someone greater than what others expected him to be. People would put him down constantly, but he fought back just as much. He tried to save himself from the stereotypes of being just another dumb Indian. He had more determination to prove others wrong when it came too exceeding in reading to further excel in his daily life.

They would make him stay quiet in class because most of them did not like to speak during class with their non-Indian teacher. Even though at home they would talk nonstop about anything. These kids did not grow up to have opportunities they could have had because they were not given a proper education. The non-Indian teachers did not push the kids to learn and they did not care about their student's education. The kids knew that they were expected to fail with their education, and they grew up knowing it was okay to fail because they were Indian. However, Alexie did not accept that. He knew he could pass and that he was smart, so he challenged himself to learn out of the classroom. Reading became the center of his education; he read late into the night, at recess, during lunch, after class, and whenever he could make time to. As a boy he read everything he could find with words on it including all the books his dad had at home, newspapers, library books, cereal boxes, posters, manuals. Even though he loved books he knew reading saved his education and his entire life. His future was opened up to new opportunities because he was educated.

Row, in “ Without Reservation” emphasizes that Alexie is a storyteller and not a prose fiction writer. A story teller, he defines, has work that, “... contains, openly or covertly, something useful …” (Row 1). Row goes on by giving evidence to why Alexie is a storyteller, and not your usual Indian writer. As he explains, Alexie reinstates the fragmented and ruptured Indian life instead of the political topics associated with them. With this idea in mind, Row believes that Alexie instills this behavior in his writing to give way for his sharp moral endings. These genuine moral endings, installment of stereotypes and Indian beliefs with consequences

Education is something that is often taken for granted in this day and age. Kids these days rebel against going to school all together. In the essays “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, we learn of two young men eager for knowledge. Both men being minors and growing up in a time many years apart, felt like taking how to read and write into their own hands, and did so with passion. On the road to a education, both Alexie and Douglass discover that education is not only pleasurable, but also painful. Alexie and Douglass both grew up in different times, in different environments, and in different worlds. They both faced different struggles and had different achievements, but they were not all that different. Even though they grew up in different times they both had the same views on how important of education was. They both saw education as freedom and as a way of self-worth even though they achieved their education in different ways. They both had a strong mind and a strong of sense of self-motivation.

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 literature many pieces of work can be compared and contrasted to each other. In “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses the challenges he faced as a young Indian adult, who found his passion of reading at an early age, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He challenged the stereotype of the young Indian students who were thought to be uneducated while living on a reservation. Likewise, in the excerpt from The Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez shares his similar experience of being a minority and trying to break stereotypes of appearing uneducated. He shares the details of his life growing up learning a different culture and the struggles he faced becoming assimilated into American culture. In these two specific pieces of literature discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes of social and educational American standards and have similar occupational goals; on the other hand the two authors share their different family relationships.