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Author of novels, poems, short prose, films, and essays
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Born in Wellpinit, WA in 1966
Spokane Indian Reservation
Born hydrocephalic (water on the brain), had
surgery at 6 months, not expected to survive.
Read Grapes of Wrath at 5 years old!!!
Ostracized by other children on the reservation
Decided to attended high school in Reardan
(away from the reservation, only Indian child)
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After graduating high school, he attended
Gonzaga University in Spokane, in 1985.
Dropped out of school after 2 years due to heavy
drinking.
Was robbed at knife point
Went back to school (Washington State University)
Initially wanted to be a doctor but Alex Kuo
inspired him to write poetry.
1991 he finished his bachelor’s degree in American
Studies.
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The Business of
Fancydancing, 1992.
 First Published Work
 84 page collection of
poems and short
stories
 Many read it as semiautobiographical:
ranging from themes of
“drunken rage to
playful humor and
biting sarcasm, love
poems and songs”
(Grassian 15).
In regards to this title, “Ambiguity
immediately appears in the title poem of
the collection...Fancydancing is a
traditional form of Native American
dance that allows a single dancer to
display his or her skill or cunning. At the
same time it is a staged performance. The
fancydancer is sly, intelligent, and able to
outwit his oppressors. The modifier
business suggest a colder economic
reality, as if the fancydance itself has
deteriorated from a high cultural art into
a cold, economic necessity, possibly
commodified by Western culture. It
suggests that what was once and art has
become a business and that the
fancydancer, in this case the individual
engaging in what should be a cherished,
valued, cultural act, is using it for selfish
aggrandizement, a kind of masquerade
for money (Grassian 16).
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The Business of
Fancydancing (film), 2002.
Seymour Polatkin is a
successful, gay Indian poet
from Spokane who confronts
his past when he returns to
his childhood home on the
reservation to attend the
funeral of a dear friend.
Smoke Signals (Film), 1999.
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Based on a few short stories from
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight
in Heaven.
One theme recognized is the
forgiving of fathers, both biological
and forefathers of this country.
Tells the story of the relationship
between a father and his son. The
story unfolds as Victor Joseph and
another young man from the
Indian reservation, Thomas Buildsthe-Fire, set off to collect Arnold
Josephs pick-up truck and ashes
from Arizona after Arnold has
died. The two men remember
Victors father along the way, but
their recollections are very
different from each other. Victor
learns many things about his father
during his journey and, in the end,
begins to understand, forgive, and
grieve his loss.
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The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven, 1993
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“a thinly disguised memoir”
(Alexie, xix).
The theme of alcoholism is
heavily reflected in this book of
short stories. Every story talks
about alcoholism in some way
In the first story, “Every Little
Hurricane,” the weather
symbolizes the effects of alcohol
abuse and its destruction of the
people in the community. “A
Drug Called Tradition,”
suggests that Indians should not
accept alcoholism as a way of
life and should replace it with a
quest for their native identity.
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Reservation Blues
The Ten Little Indians
The Indian Killer,1996
Flight,2007
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Indian Killer, 1996
Serial killer in Seattle
scalps white men
 Causes major racial
tension amongst whites
and Native Americans.
 Theme of true identity
appears through
character who is part
Indian and not seen as
being “true to the race”.
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Flight, 2007
Maybe argued as a YA
text.
 Teenager on the verge
of committing a violent
murder
 Orphaned Indian boy
who travels back and
forth through time in a
violent search for his
true identity.
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Despite his early praise of The Lone Ranger and Tonto, for example,
Louis Owens finds that Alexie's fiction
too often simply reinforces all of the stereotypes desired by white
readers: his bleakly absurd and aimless Indians are imploding in a
passion of self-destructiveness and self-loathing; there is no family or
community center toward which his characters ... might turn for
coherence; and in the process of self-destruction the Indians provide
Euramerican readers with pleasurable moments of dark humor or
the titillation of bloodthirsty savagery. Above all, the non-Indian
reader of Alexie's work is allowed to come away with a sense ... that
no one is really to blame but the Indians, no matter how loudly the
author shouts his anger. (79-80)
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Considered from another critical angle, Alexie's
artistry, I believe, may be seen as that of a
consciously moral satirist rather than as a
"cultural traitor." In fact, a close examination of
Alexie's work to date shows that he uses the
meliorative social and moral values inherent in
irony and satire, as well as certain conventional
character types (including the prejudicial
stereotype of the "drunken Indian") as
materials for constructing a realistic literary
document for contemporary Indian survival.
Bird faults the novel, for example, for what she terms its "cinematic"
narrative technique, whereby Alexie connects "scenes" via tawdry remnants
of (white) popular culture, likening him to an "Indian Spike Lee" (47-48).
She contends that, like the portrayals of African American individuals and
culture in Lee's films, much of the structure and ethos of Reservation Blues
depends on readers' knowledge of popular culture, including film, to be
successful; this reliance, Bird argues, distorts, debases, and falsifies Indian
culture and literature at the same time that it reinforces mainstream notions
of Indian stereotypes.
Native American alcoholism is a controversial subject; many people (based on Hollywood
films like the Comancheros, which starred John Wayne) still harbor stereotypes about
"drunk Indians" st
being passed out on reservations without thinking about how the alcohol
first got there and why some Indians started drinking. (43) Sherman Alexie openly
addressed this issue
:
When the book [The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
was first published, I was (and continue to be) vilified in
certain circles for my alcohol-soaked stories. Rereading
them, I suppose my critics have a point. Everybody in this
book [which the film is based on] is drunk or in love with
a drunk. And in writing about drunk Indians, I am dealing
with stereotypical material. But I can only respond with
the truth. In my family, counting parents, siblings, and
dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins, there are less than a
dozen who are currently sober and only a few who have
never drank. When I write about the destructive effects of
alcohol on Indians, I am not writing out of a literary stance
or a colonized mind's need to reinforce stereotypes. I am
writing autobiography. (44)
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