Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. is a Spokane novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.
His best-known book is the semi-autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people.
He also wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of short stories, which was adapted as the film Smoke Signals, for which he also wrote the screenplay. His first novel, Reservation Blues, received a 1996 American Book Award.
His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Early life
Alexie was born at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. He is a citizen of the Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, was a citizen of the Coeur D'Alene Tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Spokane, Colville, Choctaw, and European American ancestry. One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent.Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system. He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not experience mental damage but
had other side effects.
His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, served as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and worked other jobs as well.
Alexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" from white nuns who taught there. They called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual, due to his hydrocephalus as an infant. Until the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting; he had to take strong drugs to control them. Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males. Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals.
Education
In order to better his education, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high school, where he was the only Native American student, 22 miles from the reservation in Reardan, Washington. He excelled at his studies and became a star player on the basketball team, the Reardan High School Indians. He was elected class president and was a member of the debate team.His successes in high school won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university in Spokane. Originally, Alexie enrolled in the pre-medical program with hopes of becoming a doctor, but found he was squeamish during dissection in his anatomy classes. Alexie switched to law, but found that was not suitable, either. He felt enormous pressure to succeed in college, and consequently, he began drinking heavily to cope with his anxiety. Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes.
In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington State University, where he took a creative writing course taught by Alex Kuo, a respected poet of Chinese-American background. Alexie was at a low point in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor to him. Kuo gave Alexie an anthology entitled Songs of This Earth on Turtle's Back, by Joseph Bruchac. He was inspired by reading works of poetry written by Native Americans.
Sexual harassment allegations
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment against him by several women, to which he responded "Over the years, I have done things that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also admitting to having had an affair with author Litsa Dremousis, one of the accusers, whose specific charges he repudiated. Dremousis said that "she'd had an affair with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until the stories about his sexual behavior surfaced". She claimed that numerous women had spoken to her about Alexie's behavior. Dremousis's response initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on March 1, 2018. The allegations against Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later.The fallout from these accusations includes the Institute of American Indian Arts renaming its Sherman Alexie Scholarship as the MFA Alumni Scholarship. The blog Native Americans in Children's Literature has deleted or modified all references to Alexie. In February 2018 it was reported that the American Library Association, which had just awarded Alexie its Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, was reconsidering, and in March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the award and was postponing the publication of a paperback version of the memoir. The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unequivocal message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."
Career
Alexie published his first collection of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, in 1992 through Hanging Loose Press. With that success, Alexie stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However, in 1995, he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.In 2005, Alexie became a founding board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization that is committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth and using media for cultural expression and social change. Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.
Literary works
Alexie's stories have been included in several short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been published in various literary magazines and journals, as well as online publications.Themes
Alexie's poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor. According to Sarah A. Quirk from the Dictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?" The protagonists in most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white American society.Poetry
Within a year of graduating from college, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. His career began with the publishing of his first two collections of poetry in 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing. In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express the struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations. Common themes include alcoholism, poverty, and racism. Although he uses humor to express his feelings, the underlying message is very serious. Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by the Beloit Poetry Journal in 1995.The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems was well received, selling over 10,000 copies. Alexie refers to his writing as "fancydancing," a flashy, colorful style of competitive powwow dancing. Whereas older forms of Indian dance may be ceremonial and kept private among tribal members, the fancy dance style was created for public entertainment. Alexie compares the mental, emotional, and spiritual outlet that he finds in his writings to the vivid self-expression of the dancers. Leslie Ullman commented on The Business of Fancydancing in the Kenyon Review, writing that Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, pride and metaphysical provocation out of the hard realities...: the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage of his characters."
Alexie's other collections of poetry include:
- The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems
- Old Shirts and New Skins
- First Indian on the Moon
- Seven Mourning Songs For the Cedar Flute I Have Yet to Learn to Play
- Water Flowing Home
- The Summer of Black Widows
- The Man Who Loves Salmon
- One Stick Song
- Face, Hanging Loose Press hardcover, 160 pages,
Short stories
Ten Little Indians is a collection of "nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life," according to Christine C. Menefee of the School Library Journal. In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites have of Native Americans and at the same time shows the Native American characters coming to terms with their own identities."
War Dances is a collection of short stories, poems, and short works. It won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The collection, however, received mixed reviews.
Other short stories by Alexie include:
- Superman and Me
- The Toughest Indian in the World
- "What You Pawn I Will Redeem", published in The New Yorker
- Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories
- "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star−Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"