Sherman Alexie Superman

485 Words1 Page

This short story is about Sherman Alexie’s life as an Indian boy living on the Spokane Indian Reserve in eastern Wellpinit, Washington, this short story is about how reading and writing affected his life. The joy of reading and writing: superman and me displays his characterize mix of popular culture reference and reflection. The story opens up by Sherman Alexie saying “I learn to read with a Superman comic book”. What he remembered at the age of 3, he was a poor broken Indian boy living with his family on the Indian reservation in eastern Washington State. We we’re poor by most living standards, but one of his parents managed to find some minimum wage job or another which made the middle class by reservation standards. He lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.

His father brought home books by the pound at The Dutch's pawn shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army, and the Value Village. With extra money he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores, and Hospital gift shops. Their house was filled with books in the bedroom, bathrooms, and living rooms. His father loves books, so he decided to love books as well. He picks up his father’s book before he could read. The words were a struggle for …show more content…

In this way he learned how to read. This saying is a metaphor for him learning how to read. With the same similarities as superman, Sherman Alexie was an alien due to being a smart Indian boy that was widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and Non-Indians alike. Connecting or relating a topic to a teen audience can perfervidly convey the message out "That reading can save life's" or help people to find their voice throughout reading. He wrote this essay to describe what his life was like being and Indian, a smart Indian boy as that, and how that they are afraid to learn because of what people expect of

Show More
Related

  • Repetition In Sherman Alexie's Writing By Sherman Alexie

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Sherman Alexie And Malcolm X

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sherman Alexie describes in his essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” how he taught himself to read at the age of three from a Superman comic book. Alexie was raised by a low-class Indian family on a reservation. His teachers were white and being an "intelligent Indian"

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Joy Of Reading And Writing: Superman And Me

    112 Words  | 1 Pages

    Sherman Alexis a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian who wrote “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and me”. In the short story explains how he learned to read and write even with limited resources on the reservation where he grew up. He starts his story by using popular culture describing how he learned how to read using a comic book about “Superman”. He also explained why Indian children were never supposed to amount to anything in life and that they were supposed to be dumb among Non-Indians. He wanted to let other Indian students that reading is what saved his life. It opened up his mind and made him a better person today.

    Read More

  • Sherman Alexie's Flight Patterns

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    Living in hard conditions, can make the person understand the world better. Being disabled, can create from the person a novelist. Hearing another stories, can help the person to live satisfy. Learning history, can teach the person to be unjudged. Embodiment the author to his real experience in some of his stories, consider as the most tentacles talk that can touch reader's heart. Because he lived, heard, learned, embodied, and according to all of his written, Sherman Alexie classified as the most successful writer who his words represent the reality. The story “Flight Patterns,” which was written by Sherman Alexie was representing some perspectives from his own life, like being Native American, and person with disability. The story also was about the severe problems people in this world have with profiling. It doesn’t matter if you’re White, Black, Indian, Spanish, Muslim, Jewish, rich, or even poor everyone does it. The two character I would like to focus on in this story is called William and Fekadu.

    Read More

  • The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie

    1479 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this essay, McFarland discusses Native American poetry and Sherman Alexie’s works. He provides an overview of Alexie’s writing in both his poems and short stories. A brief analysis of Alexie’s use of humor is also included.

    Read More

  • What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Sherman Alexie And Malcom X

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading “Superman and Me,” by Sherman Alexie, I was shown how the author learned to read, and how he used his love for reading to impact his life and the lives of others. Alexie grew up with his family on an Indian reservation, relying on irregular paychecks and government surplus food. Alexie learned to read, on his own, at the young age of three. His love for reading originated from his father’s passion for books, and reading whatever books he could get access to. Alexie’s reading level reached such a high level to where he was reading Grapes of Wrath in kindergarten. He knew he was smart, and he didn’t want to take on the stereotype that all Indians are stupid. Unlike the other Indian children in his class on the reservation, Alexie tried to become as educated as he could, despite being teased by the other kids. Alexie came to describe himself as smart, lucky, and arrogant. This attitude of who he was and what he was capable of allowed ...

    Read More

  • The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me and From Reading Lolita in Tehran

    1200 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Sherman Alexie's “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” the focus is on his struggle growing up poor on the reservation. Many people would have assumed that he was a child prodigy because he taught himself to read at an early age through his hero Superman’s comic book. Reading was the escape from his life of fences on the reservation. Despite the expectations for the children by their tribal elders, he demonstrated his love of the learning process and used the opportunities of the schools to free himself from the reservation; this made him a dangerous Indian. He dealt with the bullies of the school who made sure every Indian child followed the creed o...

    Read More

  • The Theme of Isolation in On Being a Cripple, How it Feels to Be Colored Me, and The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 73-76. Print

    Read More

  • Sherman Alexie: Breaking Down Doors

    374 Words  | 1 Pages

    Have you ever been put down or discouraged for something you believe in or are good at? Well Sherman Alexie has. You would be surprised by who he is most like; the strong and inspirational Superman. Although Superman is a fictional character, him and Alexie both ‘break down doors’, get looked down upon, and are role models.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Lonely Good Company Of Books

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the library she would alternate what types of books they would read. Whenever she would read to him she would read in a way that made you cling to every word the author wrote. In times like these, Rodriguez would become engaged in these books. “I sat there and sensed for the very first time some possibility of fellowship between reader and writer, a communication, never intimate like that I heard spoken words at home convey, but nonetheless personal.” (Rodriguez 228). During this part of Rodriguez’s life, his view towards books changed.

    Read More

  • A Rhetorical Analysis Of Sherman Alexie's Superman And Me

    1416 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Sherman Alexie's Indian Education

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Power Of Reading In Sherman Alexie's Superman And Me

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reading a book is a great entertainment, but more importantly, it gives you more knowledge to learn. In a short story entitled “Superman and me” by Sherman Alexie, he discussed how it’s like to be in a minority, or an Indian in a non-Indian world, and how reading helped him get through it. Growing up, his father influenced him into reading books. Due to this he started to teach himself how to read and gained more knowledge. Though he is smart, it was hard for him to be noticed, “Indian children were expected to be stupid,” because of this he worked hard and proved the majority what he is capable of. Alexie’s passion in reading had helped himself and his fellow man rise against all the discrimination and be accepted by

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Sherman Alexie's The Joy Of Reading And Writing: Superman And Me

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    ‘’The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me’’ is an autobiography by Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer, who explains his life as an Indian boy and how learning to read shaped his entire world. Alexie lived on an indian reservation, and was expected to remain uneducated like others surrounding him. In the text he states, “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were Indian children expected to be stupid.” This quote explains how Alexie was aware that Indian children were expected to not become intelligent and be able to read.

    Read More

More about Sherman Alexie Superman

Open Document