“What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.” I wasn’t a huge fan of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian but I heard such wonderful things about Sherman Alexie’s memoir for his mother that I had to give it a read. It took me a long time to read this one, partly because I kept getting distracted by other things but […]
Cannonball Gift Exchange. Thank you so much ElCicco
I came home from work today and collected the numerous boxes from my front porch. Between Christmas shopping and getting some last minute things from Amazon for a trip my husband is taking there has been a pretty steady stream of boxes gracing our household. Needless to say, I was so excited to see I had received my Cannonball gift since everything else coming to the house seems to be for other people… Well, I have to nominate ElCicco for the Cannonball Gift Giving Hall […]
The Urban Indian Boy Enjoys Good Health Insurance
In my developmental English classes, my students and I often read Sherman Alexie’s literacy narrative, “Superman and Me,” where he describes learning to read at age three, puzzling out the meaning of text by looking at the frames of a comic book. He traces his impulse to read to his father—a man who filled the family house with books of all kinds—often purchased used and sometimes by the pound. He writes, “My father loved books and because I loved my father with an aching devotion, […]
She was, all by herself, an entire tribe of contradictions
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me is a memoir about Sherman Alexie’s mother Lillian, his childhood, and Native American history; it’s about grief, anger, and forgiveness; it’s about victims of abuse, their bullies, and fighting back as a point of honor. It’s about the specific lives of Lillian Alexie and her son, and the general experience of Native Americans in white America. Ultimately, in order to try to understand the mother who both gave him so much and hurt him so much, Alexie […]