The Power Of Opportunity For Young Adults

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.

In a Bill Moyer’s interview “Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Borders”, Moyer’s interviews Native American author and poet Sherman Alexie. In the Moyer’s and Company interview, Alexie shares his story about the struggles that he endured during his time on a Native American reservation located at Wellpinit, Washington. During the interview, Alexie goes in-depth about his conflicts that plagued the reservation. In an award-winning book by Sherman Alexie called “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Alexie writes semi-autobiography that reveals his harsh life on the reservation through a fictional character named Arnold Spirit Junior. In Alexie’s semi-autobiography, Alexie shares his struggles of a poor and alcoholic family, the

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.

The factors of the effects of oppression in the lives of African American teenagers is the opposite of the factors in which that would produce “The American Dream”. The restrictions and exclusions of the government, history, and irrational mindsets has caused many African-American teenagers to depend on unorthodox alternatives for the use of spare time, making money, and the feeling of acceptance. Oppression of African-American teenagers has caused poor education, violence, gang activity, broken or dysfunctional homes, and health issues. Hatred is another major factor of the effects of oppression in the lives of African-American teenagers. Oppression is also the cause of civil wars, and a disunited nation. Oppression doesn’t just effect the oppressed, it effects everything around it including the oppressors.

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The high school on the reservation was so helpless that the books were as old as Junior’s parents! There were times when Junior’s breakfast was a gallon of orange flavor drink mix. The only Christmas gift he’d receive was a five dollar bill if he was even lucky. Living like this and to not give up like the rest made him a survivor. Junior’s sister had given up school, but once had a dream of writing romance novels. Along with Junior’s sister, Junior’s father and mother gave up way before she did. Everyone else on the reservation had given up since it was ultimately a death camp. Even the young teenagers had given up in school.

Sherman J. Alexie, is a short story written in the first person focusing on two Native American Men who grew up together on a Reservation for Native Americans but have been estranged from each other since they were teenagers. Victor who is the narrator of this story is a young man who lost faith in his culture and its traditions, while Thomas our second main character is a deeply rooted traditional storyteller. In the beginning of the story Victor, our Native American narrator learns the death of his father. Jobless and penniless, his only wish is to go to Phoenix, Arizona and bring back his father’s ashes and belongings to the reservation in Spokane. The death of Victor’s father leads him and Thomas to a journey filled with childhood

Sherman Alexie’s interconnected stories describes the life of Native Americans living on the spokane indian reservation. He attempts to display the natives relationships,history and desires but does otherwise.Instead many can conclude that his contemporary stories portray self deprivation,isolation from society and no

He has done it through many different characters and genres of novels, but The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is probably his best work yet. Speaking as the character of a teen-ager forces Alexie to make everything action and emotion packed so that reading becomes more like listening to your funny best friend talking about his day while waiting for a ride home after school. That teen-aged boy, Arnold Spirit Jr. is arguably the geekiest Indian on the Spokane Reservation. He wears big, lopsided glasses, when he doesn’t stutter, he has a lisp, and when he goes outside he gets teased and picked on by the other kids on the reserve. Junior spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons.(Off the Rez) To say that life is hard on the Spokane Reservation doesn’t begin to touch it. “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people.” Junior explains.(Alexie 11) Heavily based on Alexie's own life experiences, this novel depicts struggles, corruption and the long-lasting effects of historical abuse toward Native Americans. Although Junior is a young adult, he must face the reality of living in absolute poverty, deal with the discrimination of the other people outside of the reservation, deal with a corrupt family that is often killed by alcoholism, break cultural barriers at an all-White high school, and maintain the

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel about Arnold Spirit (Junior), a boy from the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend high school outside the reservation in order to have a better future. During that first year at Reardan High School, Arnold has to find his place at his all-white school, cope with his best friend Rowdy and most of his tribe disowning him, and endure the deaths of his grandmother, his father’s best friend, and his sister. Alexie touches upon issues of identity, otherness, alcoholism, death, and poverty in order to stay true to his characters and the cultures within the story. Through the identification of the role of the self, identity, and social behavior

Sherman Alexie was born on October 7, 1966, in Spokane, Washington. Being a registered member of the Spokane tribe through his mother, he attended grammar school on the Spokane reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He was originally a basketball player but when he started taking an anthology of Indian poetry literature class, he realized more girls were paying attention to him, and he liked that. He said jokingly, “I should have been writing poems all along.” (pg. 9), just to be getting the attention of more girls. After taking creative writing classes in college, he began publishing magazines, such as The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Journal of Ethnic Studies, New York Quarterly, Ploughshares, and Zyzzyva. Alexie was also in Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40, New York Times Notable Book for Indian Killer, and People Magazine: Best of Pages. He also won the Lila Wallace-Reader 's Digest Writers ' Award in 1994. Alexie is the type of writer who focuses his writings on depression, poverty, and alcoholism in the lives of Native Americans that are living on the same reservations as he did. Alexie’s novels, short stories, and poem’s make the reader have a sense of sadness for the main character, but yet also makes the readers want to in a way admire and the characters, that you would think are in hopeless situations, that they soon overcome. Alexie shows the lives of the Native Americans, who are trying to escape their lives, or whatever awful

In Sherman Alexie’s novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven shows the struggles of daily Native American life, which is shown through the point of view of male character. All though out the book the following three questions appear: ‘What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? and What does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?’ Alexie uses literary devices such as point of view, imagery, characterization to make his point that the conflict of being an Indian in the U.S. in these short stories using the following short stories “An Indian Education” and “Amusement”. “An Indian Education” uses both imagery and characterization to show us what the narrator is

The author, Sherman Alexie, is a Native American novelist, born on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. In his short story, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” Alexie makes the argument that Native Americans are being negatively portrayed, mistreated and stereotyped in our country and by our government. Alexie uses a character born in the same Reservation in Washington, giving him more credibility for the arguments he makes, through the character. The audience Alexie chooses this essay for is primarily American Indians, although immigrants and minorities are a secondary audience, who many, can relate to the stereotyping and negative treatment of our government. Throughout the story, Alexie uses emotional appeal of pathos and the ethical appeal of ethos, as tools to get his point across. The words chosen in the essay by the author are clear, simple, and the story is put together carefully and easy to understand for the target audience. In the short story Alexie uses flashback to think back about experiences the character in the story went through. The narrator also recounts a dream, which is an allegorical representation of how he believes people portray him with his girlfriend and insecurities he has in their relationship. The dream explains the psychological effect that years of stereotyping and mistreatment has had on him. The narrator has always had weird dreams, but they turn to nightmares while he is living with her in Seattle. The

The youth is one of the most vulnerable groups in the labour market. The economic status of young people has declined significantly over the past two decades, despite a variety of programs designed to aid new workers in the transition from the classroom to the job market. Young people have a great impact on economic growth and productivity. It also costs governments and society at large a lot of money, both currently in terms of higher unemployment benefits and lost tax revenue and flow into the future through long-term reduced productivity and earnings. Last but not least, being young and unemployed can lead to increase in the risk of poverty, deskilling and social exclusion as well as cause loss of motivation and mental health problems. Fresh graduates lacking experience often find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle. They often lack the experience needed to fill a job opening, which prevents them from getting employed. Thus, the job-searching period for them becomes considerably longer than for experienced workers and harms their future work prospects (Vena Nedeljkovic, 2014, para. 2).