Sherman Alexie: A Brief Biography Of Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie, born October 7, 1966, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, grew up on a 156,000-acre Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Eastern Washington State, population: approximately 1000. Alexie was born with hydrocephalus (water in the brain). Medical professionals did not have high hopes for Alexie in belief that he would not have a long future, assuming he would die in surgery. Shockingly, he survived, but he suffered many side affects for most of his childhood such as seizures, bedwetting, and an enlarged skull to name a few. Sadly he was made a mockery of. Kids at school called him “the globe” on account of his enlarged skull. However, Alexie found contentment in books. By the time he was 12 he had read every book in the Wellpinit school library (Grassian 2).
Alexie attended Reardan High School 20 miles from the reservation where he excelled in his academic career leading to a locked admission to Spokane’s Jesuit Gonzaga University, but began to abuse alcohol. While he originally planned on a career in medicine, he reasoned that his persistent fainting in anatomy class questioned his medical career. Shortly after he signed up for a poetry-workshop. Alexie had an eye-opening experience, inspired by the poems he had read, he started writing his own. Alexie began writing poetry and short fiction in 1987 when he transferred to Washington State University. Alexie acquired his bachelor’s degree in 1991 from Washington State and quickly after had his works published in Hanging Loose Press, also giving him the encouragement to quit drinking. He also received a massive career boost when James Kincaid from the New York Times acknowledged his book with overflowing admiration, naming him “one of the major lyric voices of our tim...

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...ing. They are merely marinating in their own inevitable death. Who they are as Indians (their culture) is lost underneath the filth of the reservations.
Shermans Alexie’s, “Crows Testament”, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix Arizona”, and “Because My Father Said He Was the Only One Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangles Banner’ at Woodstock”, describes life on the reservations while using Foucault’s concept of bio power to further explain the Native American life in today’s modern American society. Collectively Alexie makes the point that their current lifestyle is in result of economics and the limited supply of money that circulated around the reservations is not enough for them to live a substantial, let alone mediocre life. In each text we get a little bit closer to life of Native Indians, observing how they live and why it ended up that way.