Sherman Alexie Research Paper

Sherman Alexie

There is no denying the fact that Sherman Alexie is a writer of considerable fame. A number of his literary publications have been transferred into film, which is generally a more lucrative market than books. When a writer's work of fiction is made into a movie, it generally signifies that he or she has created something of significant cultural value -- the most valuable aspect of which is its ability to generate revenue or "sales and access" (Brill de Ramirez, 1999). In addition to Alexie's standing with contemporary popular culture, he is renowned as a writer as well. The author has published numerous short stories and novels, and won some important literary awards. He earned the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, as well as the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his autobiography The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and won the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award. His work is featured on Oprah.com, a fact which alludes to his literary, popular, and lucrative value. More than these accolades, however, he is also a poet. Still, the common thread through virtually all of his works is that they deal with, in ways both large and small, his heritage as a Native American (which, for some reason, Alexie refers to by calling himself an Indian, the improper term for Native Americans). A look at his works of short fiction underscore the fact that this reliance on his heritage largely operates as a crutch in Alexie's work, which results in a preoccupation with race that obscures the meaning (and perhaps the value) of many of his short stories.

Amiri Baraka (who began his publishing career as the writer LeRoi Jones) noted that in order for an artist to have something important and worthy of conveying in his written works, he must take a stance and stake out his position in the world (Jones, p. 138, 1966). As his preoccupation with themes relating to Native Americans in his fiction and poetry indicate, Alexie has done just that. The fact that he is Native American pervades nearly every short story and novel that he has ever written. Nonetheless, this fact is evinced from a perspective in which the writer is always attempting to make sense of modernity or to convey the ramifications of living as a Native American in an American society that has not only killed the majority of such people, but is also populated with various other nationalities. From Baraka's perspective, then Alexie's work is laudable for the simple fact that he has a unique viewpoint related to his Native American heritage. The subsequent quotation attests to the fact that Alexie's decidedly complex relationship to his Native American heritage influences his work.

This Indian gadfly jumps through all the hoops, sonnet, to villanelle,, to heroic couplet, all tongue in cheeky. "I'm sorry, but I've met thousands of Indians," he told Indian Artist magazine, Spring 1998, "and I have yet to know of anyone who has stood on a mountain waiting for a sign" (Lincoln, 2010).

This passage and the author's quotation in it alludes to the fact that he is cognizant of his heritage, and yet lives it and deals with it in his writings from a decidedly modern perspective that is largely bereft of stereotypes.

Still, when deconstructing Alexie's works of short fiction, it is viable to understand his identity and artistic place in the world not just as a Native American, but also as a poet. Again, Baraka references the fact that it does not matter what a poet actually, whether writing dramas, going to the grocery store, or telling a story at a party, he or she is always a poet and evocative of the poetic. Unfortunately, however, such a statement does not readily apply to Alexie's work -- perhaps for the fact that most of it is composed in the genre known as contemporary fiction. A read of the non-poetry writings of some of the more renowned poets, such as Shelly in his riveting preface to "Prometheus Unbound," or some of Baraka's social essays in Home, or even the novel of Shelley's wife, Mary, who composed Frankenstein, underscores the fact that some of the best works of prose inevitably contain poetry and a poetic license in the use of language and conviction. However, Alexie's short stories are decidedly bereft of poetry, and appear to have exchanged such sentiment and lively interaction with language for expletives, and to references to popular culture or contemporary practices.The works of the aforementioned authors, indeed those of any poet worth his or her name, on the other hand, are endowed with an aura of timelessness. Sadly, it appears that the author's preoccupation with race -- which is but an extension of his identity as a Native American and as a Native American writer in particular -- is part of the reason why his fiction is not more imbued with poetry, as issues of race are certainly in vogue in the banal genre known as contemporary fiction.

One of the pieces of literature that most readily shows that much of Alexie's writing is preoccupied with race and his status as a Native American, which he considers a "cultural responsibility" (Alexei, no date) is his short story "Breaking and Entering." Although it is difficult to judge any writer from a single piece of work, one should realize that this tale was the first in the author's book War Dances, which won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Due to its prominent sequencing in this collection, and the fact that this work of literature was considered highly by contemporary society, one may infer that this short story is more emblematic of the author's style than others. This story is almost entirely about race -- in it the protagonist, a Native American -- kills an African-American teenage boy. It is amazing how many parallels there are found between this work and the fairly recent slaying of Trayvon Martin. Both of these instances involved the killing of unarmed, African-American teenage boys at the hands of members of other historic minority groups (who the general population believes are Caucasians) who had weapons. There are African-American protests fueled by the media in both instances, in which the killers reveal the fact that they are not Caucasian. And, ultimately, it is the murdered adolescents who are vilified, a fact which the subsequent quotation from Alexie's work proves.

his mother, Althea, instead of explaining why her good and decent son had broken and entered a stranger's house, committing a felony, had instead decided to blame me and accuse me of being yet another white man who was always looking to maim another black kid -- had already maimed generations of black kids -- when in fact I was a reservation Indian who had been plenty fucked myself by generations of white men (Alexei, 2010).

The significant aspect about this quotation is not the fate of the unarmed teenage boy, but rather the fact that the author has chosen to focus on race as the predominant theme of this story. He refers to people and groups of people as "black" (Alexei, 2010) no fewer than 23 times in what is not a lengthy story. He also references other people as white approximately 10 times and, as the preceding quotation demonstrates, his identity as a Native American is firmly entrenched into this tale's story line. However, the constant references to race seem to take away from this story. The prudent reader is likely wondering why the author feels the need to refer to the dead boy and others as "black" so many times, after initially establishing the fact of the child's race. Yet the entire tale reads like a lowbrow feature from the front paper of any newspaper in America rather than a work of literature written by an accomplished author and a poet, no less.

Granted, there are elements of sarcasm and satire within this work. The fact that the author slays a home invader with a one-handed swing from a Little League bat is hardly believable, let alone extremely laughable and attests to one of the points of human folly -- the way that people routinely use weapons to kill one another in the United States. Also, obvious points of humor such as the author's live broadcast (during the middle of an impassioned protest about the death of the child) in which he feels the need to issue a correction about his race is classic Alexei, and has all of the sarcasm and funniness that characterize many of his short stories. The following quotation, in which the narrator and protagonist of the story reflects on his interruption of the funeral, is fairly sarcastic and emphasizes the fact that he is partially satirizing this particular point about the boy's death. "Yes, that was my first official statement about the death of Elder Briggs. It didn't take clever editing to make me….....