In Sherman Alexie’s writing there are many so called “controversial” topics, which includes many writings that he has been criticized for. But for other readers, Alexie does not deserve the criticism he receives or most of the criticism he receives due to what some of the critics are saying to be true in some ways. Throughout the book The Toughest Indian in the World, Alexie portrays Indians in a way that many readers don’t understand and may not agree with or like, this is why he is being criticized but, he should not be since he is Native American and talking about his culture and writing in a way to intrigue readers to want to read his short stories and in no way is he trying to discriminate. Even though the things he may say might be considered …show more content…
Theoretically, it can be argued that Alexie and his writings allow a discussion of issues from the postmodern perspective. To give a little more insight on what the postmodern perspective is; the postmodern approach challenges the dominant assumptions of how we work in the world. Postmodernism describes the political and aesthetic movements that exist as disciplinary, social, and narrative responses to the historical period defined as modernity. Much of the content incorporated in postmodern writing such as the subjectivity of history or negative rhetorics including elements of discontinuity, etc are found in many of Sherman Alexie’s stories throughout the book The Toughest Indian in the World. Today it is difficult even to talk about the racial stereotypes once so confidently assumed. Stereotyping as a subject for study may be historical, but the emotions it arouses are eminently present day. Whether we use terms like image, stereotype or construct, we are talking about the same thing, ideas about a particular group that serve to characterize all the individuals within that …show more content…
In Assimilation, readers can see a lack of community. In Assimilation, Mary Lynn, struggles with cultural identity of her children and the question of whether she has a “white family or an Indian family” (Alexie 13) with her white husband. Disturbed, Mary Lynn’s husband disregards her question, telling her they have a “family family” ( Alexie 13), only reinforcing her feelings of isolation. The theme of white America’s blindness to the assimilation of the American Indian is prevalent in this passage, as in the rest of the book. This shows a lack of community because she doesn’t know where she should be placed, as in she doesn’t know if she coincides with white people or Native Americans. In Assimilation, Mary Lynn cheats on her husband because he is white and not Indian and she wants to make love to an Indian man. This shows readers that she has a broken family, and the reason why she cheats is because her husband doesn’t please her in the way that she wants to be pleased. Lack of community also coincides with broken families, characters living of the reservation or characters that continuously move around. In The Toughest Indian in the World, the main character loses his father and is then left alone. He has a job but not many friends to conversate with. The main character has a broken family and due to not living on his reservation he is lost and seeks to be saved by a man that is known as “the
Sherman Alexie was a man who is telling us about his life. As an author he uses a lot of repetition, understatement, analogy, and antithesis. Alexie was a man of greater words and was a little Indian boy at the beginning of the story and later became a role model for other boys like him who were shy and alone. Alexie was someone who used his writing to inspire others such as other Indian kids like himself to keep learning and become the best that they can be.
The Essay, I have chosen to read from is ReReading America was An Indian Story by Roger Jack. The topic of this narrative explores the life of an Indian boy who grows up away from his father in the Pacific Northwest. Roger Jack describes the growing up of a young Indian boy to a man, who lives away from his father. Roger demonstrates values of the Indian culture and their morals through exploration of family ties and change in these specific ties. He also demonstrates that growing up away from one’s father doesn’t mean one can’t be successful in life, it only takes a proper role model, such as the author provides for the young boy.
Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member (Sherman Alexie). He began his personal battle with substance abuse in 1985 during his freshman year at Jesuit Gonzaga University. The success of his first published work in 1990 incentivized Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characteristics of substance abuse, poverty and criminal behaviors in an effort to evoke sadness with his readers. Alexie utilizes other art forms, such as film, music, cartoons, and the print media, to bombard mainstream distortion of Indian culture and to redefine Indianness. “Both the term Indian and the stereotypical image are created through histories of misrepresentation—one is a simulated word without a tribal real and the other an i...
Alexie shows a strong difference between the treatment of Indian people versus the treatment of white people, and of Indian behavior in the non-Indian world versus in their own. A white kid reading classic English literature at the age of five was undeniably a "prodigy," whereas a change in skin tone would instead make that same kid an "oddity." Non-white excellence was taught to be viewed as volatile, as something incorrect. The use of this juxtaposition exemplifies and reveals the bias and racism faced by Alexie and Indian people everywhere by creating a stark and cruel contrast between perceptions of race. Indian kids were expected to stick to the background and only speak when spoken to. Those with some of the brightest, most curious minds answered in a single word at school but multiple paragraphs behind the comfort of closed doors, trained to save their energy and ideas for the privacy of home. The feistiest of the lot saw their sparks dulled when faced with a white adversary and those with the greatest potential were told that they had none. Their potential was confined to that six letter word, "Indian." This word had somehow become synonymous with failure, something which they had been taught was the only form of achievement they could ever reach. Acceptable and pitiable rejection from the
In a social setting the feeling of belongingness to a group is very important. If one is different and does not belong to a group that person is outcasted. The first story, “The Box” written by Riel Nason is about a character named Jeff who goes to a long time friends wedding and faces a number of obstacles. The second story is called “One, Two, Three Little Indians” written by Hugh Garner and focuses on the obstacles a native-canadian faces. Characters Jeff and Big Tom experience alienation and the difference in values which restrict them from achieving belongingness. Ultimately, it is seen that acceptance to the environment is the key to either success into integrating or failure to do so in certain circumstances.
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
In the beginning of the film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, viewers are introduced to the young Native American boy Oyisha, later known as Charles Eastman. After his father made him leave his tribe to go to an Native American boarding school, he is quickly forced to change his cultural identity through assimilation. Assimilation caused by the Dawes Act of 1887 was widely used to erase every bit of culture that Native Americans held so they can conform to “civilized” society. The film accurately portrays assimilation as the viewers see the main character Charles Eastman change from a cultured Native American boy to a man visibly disconnected from is Native American heritage.
While both Zitkala Sa and Sherman Alexie were Native Americans, and take on a similar persona showcasing their native culture in their text, the two diverge in the situations that they face. Zitkala Sa’s writing takes on a more timid shade as she is incorporated into the “white” culture, whereas Alexie more boldly and willingly immerses himself into the culture of the white man. One must leave something behind in order to realize how important it actually is. Alexie grew up in the Indian culture but unlike Sa he willingly leaves. Alexie specifically showcases the changes in his life throughout the structure of his text through the idea of education.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
Being unwanted, uncared for, unloved and forgotten by everybody even by your own family is a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. As the book The absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie talks about an Indian boy, Arnold Spirit, who was born in the Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit with brain damage. Arnold takes us along on his journey and we learn how absolutely awful and devastating poverty is and it is not for an individual but for an entire community. This condition leads to senseless death. They never had the chance to be anything but poor and hopeless Indians. If they stop dreaming of being poor and start searching for hope and try to live up with high expectations and accept more to them. They will look to their future with excitement and confidence and begin to do more of what they ever imagined. As a result, they will have a better living condition. Throughout the novel, we learn from Arnold’s fight for a better life. He inspires us and gives us hope. He goes to Reardan where white people live searching for hope. There, he makes new white friends and changes their ideas about Indians. Another inspiration we see in this book is, Mary Spirit, Arnold’s older sister, who leaves her reservation to make her dream come true. She goes to Montana, gets married and starts focusing more on writing her romance novels rather than focusing more on the reservation opinions. Therefore, Arnold’s and Mary’s decision is that they are not simply Indians or White but human being who belongs to many tribes.
Alexie begins the essay by telling the audience some background information about himself and his family. He tells of how they lived on an Indian Reservation and survived on “a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.” (Page 1, para. 1) Right from the start, Alexie grabs the emotions of his audience. Alexie then goes on to talk of his father and how because of his love for his father, he developed a love for reading. “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.” (Page 1, para. 2) He talks of how he taught himself to read and that because of the books he began to thirst for more knowledge. Alexie says that once he learned to read, he began to advance quickly in his schooling. However, because of his thirst for knowledge, he got into much trouble. “A smart Indian was a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike.” (Page 2, para. 6) This statement is one of the most powerful statements in the entire essay. The reason for this being that Alexie knows that trouble will come but he was not going to let it ...
It was dangerous, according to societal standards, to be an educated Indian, or even an educated minority. In a society where you were destined to fail it was not abnormal for Alexie not to be recognized. The children knew they would be ridiculed so they would play the role of the dumb Indian while at school. Outside of school they would display themselves to be more educated than they gave themselves credit for. This behavior was widely expected of Indians and accepted by non-Indians: everyone but Sherman Alexie. His motivation to succeed encompassed his life, in high school he chose public schools over the reservation. Sherman Alexis still suffered from the same ridicule but the difference between him and his peers is that he would not let that interfere with his objective to prove to the society that Indians can be educated,
The author, Sherman Alexie, is extremely effective through his use of ethos and ethical appeals. By sharing his own story of a sad, poor, indian boy, simply turning into something great. He establishes his authority and character to the audiences someone the reader can trust. “A little indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly…If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living in the reservations, he might have been called a prodigy.” Alexie mentions these two different ideas to show that he did have struggles and also to give the audience a chance to connect with his struggles and hopefully follow the same journey in becoming something great. By displaying his complications and struggles in life with stereotypical facts, Alexie is effective as the speaker because he has lived the live of the intended primary audience he is trying to encourage which would be young Indian
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
In conclusion, Sherman Alexie created a story to demonstrate the stereotypes people have created for Native Americans. The author is able to do this by creating characters that present both the negative and positive stereotypes that have been given to Native Americans. Alexie has a Native American background. By writing a short story that depicts the life of an Indian, the reader also gets a glimpse of the stereotypes encountered by Alexie. From this short story readers are able to learn the importance of having an identity while also seeing how stereotypes are used by many people. In the end of the story, both Victor and Thomas are able to have an understanding of each other as the can finally relate with each other through Victor's father.