Sherman Alexie | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Alexie in 2016 | |
| Born | (1966-10-07)October 7, 1966 (age 59) Spokane, Washington, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Nationality | Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation,[1] American |
| Genre | Native American literature, humor, documentary fiction |
| Literary movement | Indigenous Nationalism |
| Notable works | •The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian •Smoke Signals •Reservation Blues •The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven •You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir •War Dances |
| Notable awards | American Book Award 1996 National Book Award 2010 |
| Website | |
| fallsapart | |
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is aSpokane novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as anIndigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on theSpokane Indian Reservation and now lives inSeattle, Washington.[2]
His best-known book is thesemi-autobiographicalyoung adult novel,The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S.National Book Award for Young People's Literature[3] and theOdyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie).[4]
He also wroteThe Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories, which was adapted as the filmSmoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay. His first novel,Reservation Blues, received a 1996American Book Award.[5]His 2009 collection of short stories and poems,War Dances, won the 2010PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.[6]
Alexie was born atSacred Heart Hospital inSpokane, Washington.[7] He is a citizen of theSpokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation[1][8] and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.[9][10] His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, was a citizen of theCoeur D'Alene Tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was ofSpokane,Colville,Choctaw, and European American ancestry.[11][12] One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent.[13]
Alexie was born withhydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system.[14] He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived.[12] Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not experience mental damage buthad other side effects.[14]
His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, served as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and worked other jobs as well.[14]
Alexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" from white nuns who taught there. They called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual, due to his hydrocephalus as an infant. Until the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting; he had to take strong drugs to control them.[14][15] Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males.[15] Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals.[16]
In order to better his education, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high school, where he was the only Native American student,[15] 22 miles from the reservation inReardan, Washington.[14] He excelled at his studies and became a star player on the basketball team, theReardan High School Indians.[14] He was elected class president and was a member of the debate team.[14]
His successes in high school won him a scholarship in 1985 toGonzaga University, a Jesuit university in Spokane.[14][15] Originally, Alexie enrolled in thepre-medical program with hopes of becoming a doctor,[15] but found he was squeamish during dissection in his anatomy classes.[15] Alexie switched to law, but found that was not suitable, either.[15] He felt enormous pressure to succeed in college, and consequently, he began drinking heavily to cope with his anxiety.[17] Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes.[15]
In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled inWashington State University (WSU),[15] where he took a creative writing course taught byAlex Kuo, a respected poet of Chinese-American background. Alexie was at a low point in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor to him.[12] Kuo gave Alexie an anthology entitledSongs of This Earth on Turtle's Back, byJoseph Bruchac. He was inspired by reading works of poetry written by Native Americans.[12]
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment against him by several women, to which he responded "Over the years, I have done things that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also admitting to having had an affair with author Litsa Dremousis, one of the accusers, whose specific charges he repudiated.[18][19] Dremousis said that "she'd had an affair with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until the stories about his sexual behavior surfaced".[19] She claimed that numerous women had spoken to her about Alexie's behavior.[20][21] Dremousis's response initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted inThe Stranger on March 1, 2018.[22] The allegations against Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later.[23]
The fallout from these accusations includes theInstitute of American Indian Arts renaming its Sherman Alexie Scholarship as the MFA Alumni Scholarship. The blogNative Americans in Children's Literature has deleted or modified all references to Alexie.[24] In February 2018 it was reported that theAmerican Library Association, which had just awarded Alexie itsCarnegie Medal forYou Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir,[25] was reconsidering, and in March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the award and was postponing the publication of a paperback version of the memoir.[26] TheAmerican Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie forThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unequivocal message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."[27]
Alexie published his first collection of poetry,The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, in 1992 through Hanging Loose Press.[12][28] With that success, Alexie stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However, in 1995, he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.[15]
In 2005, Alexie became a founding board member ofLonghouse Media, a non-profit organization that is committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth and using media for cultural expression and social change. Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.[29]
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Alexie's stories have been included in several short story anthologies, includingThe Best American Short Stories 2004, edited byLorrie Moore; andPushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been published in various literary magazines and journals, as well as online publications.
Alexie's poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor.[17] According to Sarah A. Quirk from theDictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?"[12] The protagonists in most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white American society.[17]
Within a year of graduating from college[clarification needed], Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and theNational Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.[30] His career began with the publishing of his first two collections of poetry in 1992, entitled,I Would Steal Horses andThe Business of Fancydancing.[12] In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express the struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations. Common themes include alcoholism, poverty, and racism.[12] Although he uses humor to express his feelings, the underlying message is very serious. Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by theBeloit Poetry Journal in 1995.
The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)[31] was well received, selling over 10,000 copies.[15] Alexie refers to his writing as "fancydancing,"[16] a flashy, colorful style of competitivepowwow dancing. Whereas older forms of Indian dance may be ceremonial and kept private among tribal members, the fancy dance style was created for public entertainment.[16] Alexie compares the mental, emotional, and spiritual outlet that he finds in his writings to the vivid self-expression of the dancers.[17] Leslie Ullman commented onThe Business of Fancydancing in theKenyon Review, writing that Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, pride and metaphysical provocation out of the hard realities...: the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage of his characters."[17]
Alexie's other collections of poetry include:
Alexie published his first prose work, entitledThe Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1993.[12] The book consists of a series of short stories that are interconnected. Several prominent characters are explored, and they have been featured in later works by Alexie. According to Sarah A. Quirk,The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be considered abildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, moving from relative innocence to a mature level on experience."[12]
Ten Little Indians (2004) is a collection of "nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life," according to Christine C. Menefee of theSchool Library Journal.[17] In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites have of Native Americans and at the same time shows the Native American characters coming to terms with their own identities."[17]
War Dances is a collection of short stories, poems, and short works. It won the 2010PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The collection, however, received mixed reviews.[17]
Other short stories by Alexie include:
In his first novel,Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the characters fromThe Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, who have grown up together on the Spokane Indian reservation, were teenagers in the short story collection. InReservation Blues they are now adult men in their thirties.[35] Some of them are now musicians and in a band together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of theLos Angeles Times wrote in a 1995 review ofReservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his alertness to a divided audience, Native American and Anglo."[35] Klinkenborg says that Alexie is "willing to risk didacticism whenever he stops to explain the particulars of the Spokane and, more broadly, the Native American experience to his readers."[35]
Indian Killer (1996) is a murder mystery set among Native American adults in contemporarySeattle, where the characters struggle with urban life, mental health, and the knowledge that there is a serial killer on the loose. Characters deal with the racism in the university system, as well as in the community at large, where Indians are subjected to being lectured about their own culture by white professors who are actually ignorant of Indian cultures.[17]
Alexie's young adult novel,The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age story that began as a memoir of his life and family on the Spokane Indian reservation.[17] The novel focuses on a fourteen-year-old Indian named Arnold Spirit. The novel is semi-autobiographical, including many events and elements of Alexie's life.[17] For example, Arnold was born with hydrocephalus, and was teased a lot as a child. The story also portrays events after Arnold's transfer to Reardan High School, which Alexie attended.[17] The novel received great reviews and continues to be a top seller. Bruce Barcott from theNew York Times Book Review observed, "Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home."[17]
Flight (2007) also features an adolescent protagonist. The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is a fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Native and European ancestry who has bounced around the foster system in Seattle. The novel explores experiences of the past, as Zits experiences short windows into others' lives after he believes himself to be shot while committing a crime.[17]
Alexie's memoir,You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, was released byHachette in June 2017.[36]Claudia Rowe ofThe Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that the memoir "pulls readers so deeply into the author's youth on the Spokane Indian Reservation that most will forget all about facile comparisons and simply surrender to Alexie's unmistakable patois of humor and profanity, history and pathos."[37] Alexie cancelled his book tour in support ofYou Don't Have to Say You Love Me in July 2017 due to the emotional toll that promoting the book was taking. In September 2017, he decided to resume the tour, with some significant changes. As he related to Laurie Hertzel ofThe Star Tribune, "I'm not performing the book," he said. "I'm getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." He went on to add that he won't be answering any questions that he doesn't want to answer. "I'll put my armor back on," he said.[38]
In 1998 Alexie's filmSmoke Signals gained considerable attention.[17] Alexie based the screenplay on his short story collection,The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and characters and events from a number of Alexie's works make appearances in the film.[17] The film was directed by Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho) with a predominantly Native American production team and cast.[15] The film is aroad movie andbuddy film, featuring two young Indians, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the reservation on a road trip to retrieve the body of Victor's dead father (Gary Farmer).[17] During their journey the characters' childhood is explored via flashbacks. The film took top honors at theSundance Film Festival.[17] It received an 86% and "fresh" rating from the online film databaseRotten Tomatoes.[39]
The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity,gay identity, cultural involvement vsblood quantum, living on the reservation or off it, and other issues related to what makes someone a "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice to leave the reservation and make his living performing for predominantly-white audiences.Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire in "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban gay man with a white partner. The death of a peer brings the protagonist home to the reservation, where he reunites with his friends from his childhood and youth. The film is unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely female crew to produce the film. Many of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real events in their lives. It received a 57 percent and "rotten" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.[40]
Other film projects include:
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| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-4 | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011)."10-4".Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. RetrievedFebruary 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| Double Wit | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011)."Double Wit".Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. RetrievedFebruary 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011)."Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System".Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. RetrievedFebruary 28, 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| 16D | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 24, 2011)."16D".Narrative Magazine (Poems of the Week: 2010–2011). | ||
| In'din Curse | 2012 | Alexie, Sherman (March 29, 2011)."In'din Curse".Narrative Magazine (Winter 2012). | ||
| Autopsy | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (January 31, 2017)."Autopsy".Early Bird Books. | ||
| Hymn | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (August 16, 2017)."Hymn".Early Bird Books. |
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superman and Me | 1997 | Alexie, Sherman (April 19, 1998). "Superman and Me".The Los Angeles Times. | ||
| What You Pawn I Will Redeem | 2003 | Alexie, Sherman (April 21, 2003)."What You Pawn I Will Redeem".The New Yorker. | Best American Short Stories 2004 | |
| The Human Comedy | 2010 | Alexie, Sherman (February 2010)."The Human Comedy".Narrative Magazine (Fall 2010). | A six-word story. | |
| Idolatry | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 3, 2010)."Idolatry".Narrative Magazine (Spring 2011). | ||
| A Strange Day in July | 2011 | The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales | ||
| Murder-Suicide | 2012 | Alexie, Sherman (April 8, 2011)."Murder-Suicide".Narrative Magazine (Winter 2012). | A six-word story. | |
| Happy Trails | 2013 | Alexie, Sherman (June 10–17, 2013)."Happy Trails".The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 17. pp. 64–65. | ||
| The Human Comedy Part II | 2016 | Alexie, Sherman (September 22, 2015)."The Human Comedy Party II".Narrative Magazine (Winter 2016). | A six-word story. | |
| Clean, Cleaner, Cleanest | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (April 21, 2003)."Clean, Cleaner, Cleanest".The New Yorker. | ||
| A Vacuum Is a Space Entirely Devoid of Matter | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (July 11, 2017)."A Vacuum Is a Space Entirely Devoid of Matter".Narrative Magazine (Fall 2017). |
Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, a citizen of theThree Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation ofHidatsa,Ho-Chunk andPotawatomi heritage.[41] They live inSeattle with their two sons.[28]
In 2012,Arizona's HB 2281 removed Alexie's works, along with those of others, from Arizona school curriculum. Alexie's response:
Let's get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given themenormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.[42]
Alexie's influences for his literary works do not rely solely on traditional Indian forms. He "blends elements of popular culture, Indian spirituality, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reservation life to create his characters and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk.[12] Alexie's work often includes humor as well. According to Quirk, he does this as a "means of cultural survival for American Indians—survival in the face of the larger American culture's stereotypes of American Indians and their concomitant distillation of individual tribal characteristics into one pan-Indian consciousness."[12]
1996 [...]Reservation Blues,Sherman Alexie
