What Is Sherman Alexie's Purpose Of Writing

. Captivated by the trials of others’ encounters, the reader finds hope in his own life. For some, books are an escape. He is able to disappear into a new world, with different lives, and extreme or sometimes even similar situations. However, his real world problems are still ever-present. In Sherman Alexie’s article, “Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood,” he claims that many

She does not understand why the older and well-known authors are not being read in high school. Prose uses a personal experience from her son’s sophomore English class. He had to read a “weeper and former bestseller by Judith Guest” (424), about a dysfunctional family dealing with a teenage son’s suicide attempt. “No instructor has ever asked my sons to read Alice Munro, who writes so lucidly and beautifully about the hypersensitivity that makes adolescence a hell,”(424). She again mentions books she approves of that should be read in English classes.

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

Sherman Alexie’s “Flight” is a book about a time traveling orphan named Zits, guilty about shooting a busy bank. His whole life was built on wanting to escape his foster homes and witnessing acts of violence done to others and himself. He confesses that the only person that ever truly loved him died when he was 7. His alcoholic father chose drinks rather than his own family. Because of the evil in his life, he becomes that evil himself. He becomes somebody easy for himself to hate and thinks any ounce of compassion towards him is fake. His form of revenge on the universe is shooting mass amounts of people. Not even a few minutes into his shooting spree, he is shot and gone before he hits the ground. He then experiences the lives of an FBI agent, a young Indian, an old French soldier, a pilot that trained a terrorist, and his own cowardly father. Sherman Alexie’s telling of Zits emotional experiences makes you weep and you are forced to learn along with Zits. Through his time traveling journey and experiences through others’ lives, he learns lessons about life and the importance of finding the good rather than the bad.

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.

In the essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie credits learning to read a Superman comic book with saving his life. As an Indian boy growing up on a reservation in Spokane, Washington, where being uneducated was not the exception but the rule, Alexie was given few opportunities to succeed. The Superman comic book was the book he taught himself to read with, which in turn saved him from going down a path that lead to a the life of inferiority and failure. Learning to read gave him the confidence to break down a door that had previously prevented Indians from succeeding as well as the driving force that allowed him to persevere against the adversity he faced. The significance of Superman is carried on

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.

The casual tone allows him to engage with his readers more effectively, for it feels as if it is a normal day-to-day conversation with the author. This can also relate to the intended target audience. Sherman is attempting to share his experience with school-age children as well as adults who may read his passage. This fact is evident in the way that he simplifies his sentences and yet uses mature enough language and grammar so that his passage can resonate with anyone who can read, young or old. For the kids, he attempts to inspire them by recounting how not being afraid to speak up in class and be the intelligent one among his classmates benefitted him in the long run – he pursued his love of writing, and achieved his goal of being an author. His message to children is that you can do anything, no matter what odds or challenges are stacked against you. For the adults, his message is that nurturing young children and encouraging them to read, write, and learn will produce a well-rounded individual later on, and that everyone is unique and has potential regardless of origin or

The odds were against Sherman Alexie on that day in October 1966. Not only was he born a minority, but he was also hydrocephalic. At the age of 6 months, he had a brain operation, but was not expected to live. Though he pulled through, doctors predicted he would be severely mentally retarded. Fortunately, they were wrong, but he did suffer through seizures and wet his bed throughout his childhood ("What" 1).

Writers write for a reason, they try to tell a story, describe an image or an emotion or an idea. And they do this to share a message. Metaphor is more than a 65 point scrabble word, it’s a decision that an author makes in order to further a message that the author is trying to share. Writing has a point. Both sherman alexie and joy harjo wrote for a reason, in their pieces “ a drug called tradition” and “ the women hanging from the thirteenth floor window” they talk about individuals relationships with their own future and past and the relationships of others.

Psychologists usually agree that the teenage years are among the most difficult periods in one’s life. Most teens are trying to figure who they are, what they believe, and how they fit into the world around them. Beginning in the late 1970’s, a whole genre of fiction, referred to as coming-of- age literature, emerged and serves, at least for many teens, as believable presentations of young people learning to navigate the difficulties of their lives, often fraught with feelings of rejection, seemingly unresolvable personal turmoil, social problems, school and family issues, etc. Indeed one value of reading is to see and better understand some aspects of ourselves through studying others. The reading of SPEAK, a somewhat controversial

Sherman Alexie uses diction and syntax to show that if there aren’t any legal consequences for a bad action, there will always be another kind of consequence. In the short story there is a young man who is not a very good hunter, misses frequently, and one day he hit something, he walked down to it and found out he accidentally shot a person. The man hides the body and doesn’t tell anyone; years went by and no one ever found out. After the author shot the man he explains his thoughts as, “For the next year, I was terrified that the body would be discovered. I scanned the newspaper for missing men. Missing criminals. Missing drug dealers.” The author uses diction here when he talks about his feelings, he says terrified. The word terrified has a much stronger

When I was in 7th grade, I learned to be religiously literate, through trusting God in hard times instead of being ‘medically literate’; I learned that letting go of things, and not letting my emotions take over at the wrong times, helped me to step up my faith. During 7th grade I had an experience that most people will never have or understand. I was great at hiding it externally, but internally, I was on my death bed. It all started with a physical, which, of course, was no big deal. Not until there appeared to be a big problem with my X-ray and I had to be referred to a spinal surgeon to double check my results. I ended up receiving a confirmation; I had scoliosis, and that there was nothing left to do, but wait for back surgery. Naturally,

Seeing and hearing the writer behind Smoke Signal influneces my answer in numerous ways. To begin, it helps me understand the view Sherman Alexie has towards Indians. Throughout Sherman Alexie's life he hasn't been able to fully belong to either group of people. Sherman Alexie is essential stuck between being Indian and American. Because of this split between Sherman Alexie, he was able to connect to people on many different levels. As Sherman Alexie quotes, "I can go to New York and people think I am half of whatever they are". It is this connection that has led Sherman Alexie to not only express his views on Indians, but to help the world see the Indian World through his point of views. Being able to hear Sherman Alexie contributes to the

Tyler, Anne. "Teenage Wasteland." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. 188-95. Print.