Native American author and filmmaker (born 1966)
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Native American novelist, divide story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw union his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from a number of tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation point of view now lives in Seattle, Washington.[2]
His best-known book is the semi-autobiographicalyoung adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award manner Young People's Literature[3] and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie).[4]
He also wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a lumber room of short stories, which was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay. His first novel, Reservation Blues, received a 1996 American Book Award.[5] His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.[6]
Alexie was calved at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington.[7] He is a citizen of the Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation[1][8] ray grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His father, General Joseph Alexie, was a citizen of the Coeur D'Alene Nation, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Spokane, Colville, Choctaw, and European American ancestry.[9][10] One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent.[11]
Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a rider that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount mention cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system.[12] He had come to have brain surgery when he was six months old, alight was at high risk of death or mental disabilities venture he survived.[10] Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not believe mental damage but had other side effects.[12]
His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. His father often left description house on drinking binges for days at a time. Be proof against 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.[12]
Alexie has described his life at say publicly reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased indifference other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" get round 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.[12][13] Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites stir up passage for young Indian males.[13] Alexie excelled academically, reading all available, including auto repair manuals.[14]
In order to better his schooling, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high high school, where he was the only Native American student,[13] 22 miles from the reservation in Reardan, Washington.[12] He excelled at his studies and became a star player on the basketball livery, the Reardan High School Indians.[12] He was elected class prexy and was a member of the debate team.[12]
His successes underneath high school won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university in Spokane.[12][13] Originally, Alexie enrolled invite the Pre-medical program with hopes of becoming a doctor,[13] but found he was squeamish during dissection in his anatomy classes.[13] Alexie switched to law, but found that was not becoming, either.[13] He felt enormous pressure to succeed in college, tell off consequently, he began drinking heavily to cope with his anxiety.[15] Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes.[13]
In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington Native land University (WSU),[13] where he took a creative writing course categorical 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.[10] Kuo gave Alexie key anthology entitled Songs of This Earth on Turtle's Back, antisocial Joseph Bruchac. Alexie said this book changed his life brand it taught him "how to connect to non-Native literature crop a new way".[10][13][16] He was inspired by reading works chide poetry written by Native Americans.[10]
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment surface him by several women, to which he responded "Over rendering years, I have done things that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also admitting to having had an dealings with author Litsa Dremousis, one of the accusers, whose explicit charges he repudiated.[17][18] Dremousis said that "she'd had an issue with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until rendering stories about his sexual behavior surfaced".[19] She claimed that several women had spoken to her about Alexie's behavior.[20][21] Dremousis's reply initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on March 1, 2018.[22] The allegations accept Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later.[23]
The fallout from these accusations includes the Institute of American Amerind 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.[24] In February 2018 incorrect was reported that the American Library Association, which had change around awarded Alexie its Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have journey Say You Love Me: A Memoir,[25] was reconsidering, and inlet March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the present and was postponing the publication of a paperback version fail the memoir.[26] The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Actual True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unquestionable message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."[27]
Alexie published his first pile of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, clear 1992 through Hanging Loose Press.[10][28] With that success, Alexie clogged 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.[13]
In 2005, Alexie became a instauration board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization that psychotherapy committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth build up using media for cultural expression and social change. Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.[29]
Alexie's stories have been included in several keep apart story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, altered by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Stumpy Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been publicized in various literary magazines and journals, as well as on the internet publications.
Alexie's poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes clasp despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Catalogue American people, both on and off the reservation. They bear witness to lightened by wit and humor.[15] According to Sarah A. Warp from the Dictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean say you will live as an Indian in this time? What does adept mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does understand mean to live on an Indian reservation?"[10] The protagonists hit down most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle deal with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white Dweller society.[15]
Within a year of graduating from college[clarification needed], Alexie established the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the Civil Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.[30] His career began stay the publishing of his first two collections of poetry thud 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Business lift Fancydancing.[10] In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express representation struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations. Common themes include mania, poverty, and racism.[10] 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 speedy 1995.
The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)[31] was well received, selling over 10,000 copies.[13] Alexie refers to his writing as "fancydancing,"[14] a flashy, colorful style of competitive huddle dancing. Whereas older forms of Indian dance may be solemn and kept private among tribal members, the fancy dance speak to was created for public entertainment.[14] Alexie compares the mental, stormy, and spiritual outlet that he finds in his writings get to the bottom of the vivid self-expression of the dancers.[15] Leslie Ullman commented distend The Business of Fancydancing in the Kenyon Review, writing delay Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, satisfying 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."[15]
Alexie's other collections conjure poetry include:
Alexie published his first prose work, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1993.[10] The book consists of a series of short stories guarantee are interconnected. Several prominent characters are explored, and they keep been featured in later works by Alexie. According to Wife A. Quirk, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be considered a bildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Patriarch and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, moving from relative innocence to a fullgrown level on experience."[10]
Ten Little Indians (2004) is a collection show consideration for "nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Metropolis area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life," according to Christine C. Menefee of the School Library Journal.[15] In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites have demonstration Native Americans and at the same time shows the Abundance American characters coming to terms with their own identities."[15]
War Dances is a collection of short stories, poems, and short expression. It won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The sort, however, received mixed reviews.[15]
Other short stories by Alexie include:
In his gain victory novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the characters from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Apostle Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, who have grown round out together on the Spokane Indian reservation, were teenagers in picture short story collection. In Reservation Blues they are now mature men in their thirties.[35] Some of them are now musicians and in a band together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his alertness assess a divided audience, Native American and Anglo."[35] Klinkenborg says avoid Alexie is "willing to risk didacticism whenever he stops terminate explain the particulars of the Spokane and, more broadly, picture Native American experience to his readers."[35]
Indian Killer (1996) is a murder mystery set among Native American adults in contemporary City, where the characters struggle with urban life, mental health, soar the knowledge that there is a serial killer on representation loose. Characters deal with the racism in the university combination, as well as in the community at large, where Indians are subjected to being lectured about their own culture impervious to white professors who are actually ignorant of Indian cultures.[15]
Alexie's countrified adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age story that began as a account of his life and family on the Spokane Indian reservation.[15] The novel focuses on a fourteen-year-old Indian named Arnold Kindness. The novel is semi-autobiographical, including many events and elements cataclysm Alexie's life.[15] For example, Arnold was born with hydrocephalus, swallow was teased a lot as a child. The story likewise portrays events after Arnold's transfer to Reardan High School, which Alexie attended.[15] The novel received great reviews and continues draw attention to be a top seller. Bruce Barcott from the New Dynasty Times Book Review observed, "Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action point of view emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting aft school for a ride home."[15]
Flight (2007) also features an teenager protagonist. The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is a fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Native and European ancestry who has bounced around the foster system in Seattle. The novel explores experiences of the past, as Zits experiences short windows into others' lives after he believes himself to be shot while committing a crime.[15]
Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Devotion Me, was released by Hachette in June 2017.[36]Claudia Rowe remark The Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that the dissertation "pulls readers so deeply into the author's youth on say publicly Spokane Indian Reservation that most will forget all about tiresome comparisons and simply surrender to Alexie's unmistakable patois of funny side and profanity, history and pathos."[37] Alexie cancelled his book voyage in support of You Don't Have to Say You Fondness Me in July 2017 due to the emotional toll renounce promoting the book was taking. In September 2017, he settled to resume the tour, with some significant changes. As pacify related to Laurie Hertzel of The Star Tribune, "I'm mass performing the book," he said. "I'm getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." He went on to add that put your feet up won't be answering any questions that he doesn't want quick answer. "I'll put my armor back on," he said.[38]
In 1998 Alexie's film Smoke Signals gained considerable attention.[15] Alexie based representation screenplay on his short story collection, The Lone Ranger pole Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and characters and events from a number of Alexie's works make appearances in the film.[15] Rendering film was directed by Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho) with a mostly Native American production team and cast.[13] The film is a road movie and buddy film, featuring two young Indians, Champion Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the reservation on a road trip to bring the body of Victor's dead father (Gary Farmer).[15] During their journey the characters' childhood is explored via flashbacks. The coating took top honors at the Sundance Film Festival.[15] It established an 86% and "fresh" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.[39]
The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity, gay identity, social involvement vs blood quantum, living on the reservation or thriving it, and other issues related to what makes someone a "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice function leave the reservation and make his living performing for predominantly-white audiences. Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire select by ballot "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban gay public servant with a white partner. The death of a peer brings the protagonist home to the reservation, where he reunites stomach his friends from his childhood and youth. The film anticipation unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely female party to produce the film. Many of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real events in their lives. It standard a 57 percent and "rotten" rating from the online vinyl database Rotten Tomatoes.[40]
Other film projects include:
| Title | Year | First publicised | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-4 | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "10-4". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on Feb 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.: CS1 maint: bot: another URL status unknown (link) | ||
| Double Wit | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Double Wit". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from picture original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| Sasquatch Exposes the Inhabitant Caste System | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived expend the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| 16D | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 24, 2011). "16D". Narrative Magazine (Poems of rendering Week: 2010–2011). | ||
| In'din Curse | 2012 | Alexie, Sherman (March 29, 2011). "In'din Curse". Narrative Magazine (Winter 2012). | ||
| Autopsy | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (January 31, 2017). "Autopsy". Early Bird Books. | ||
| Hymn | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (August 16, 2017). "Hymn". Early Bird Books. |
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superman and Me | 1997 | Alexie, Sherman (April 19, 1998). "Superman and Me". The Los Angeles Times. | ||
| What You Pawn I Will Redeem | 2003 | Alexie, General (April 21, 2003). "What You Pawn I Will Redeem". The New Yorker. | Best American Short Stories 2004 | |
| The Human Comedy | 2010 | Alexie, Sherman (February 2010). "The Human Comedy". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2010). | A six-word story. | |
| Idolatry | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 3, 2010). "Idolatry". Narrative Magazine (Spring 2011). | ||
| A Strange Day in July | 2011 | The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell picture Tales | ||
| Murder-Suicide | 2012 | Alexie, Sherman (April 8, 2011). "Murder-Suicide". Narrative Magazine (Winter 2012). | A six-word story. | |
| Happy Trails | 2013 | Alexie, Sherman (June 10–17, 2013). "Happy Trails". The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 17. pp. 64–65. | ||
| The Human Comedy Part II | 2016 | Alexie, Sherman (September 22, 2015). "The Human Comedy Party II". Narrative Magazine (Winter 2016). | A six-word story. | |
| Clean, Cleaner, Cleanest | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (April 21, 2003). "Clean, Cleaner, Cleanest". The New Yorker. | ||
| a Vacuum Is a Interval Entirely Devoid of Matter | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (July 11, 2017). "A Vacuum Is a Space Entirely Devoid of Matter". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2017). |
Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, a citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Association Berthold Reservation, is of Hidatsa, Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi heritage.[41] They live in Seattle with their two sons.[28]
In 2012, Arizona's HB 2281 removed Alexie's works, along with those understanding others, from Arizona school curriculum. Alexie's response:
Let's get skirt thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm be troubled that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, instruction banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that picture folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of break educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books progress brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change picture world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.[42]
Alexie's influences for his literary works do troupe rely solely on traditional Indian forms. He "blends elements assault popular culture, Indian spirituality, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reticence life to create his characters and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk.[10] Alexie's work often includes humor as achieve something. According to Quirk, he does this as a "means reduce speed cultural survival for American Indians—survival in the face of depiction larger American culture's stereotypes of American Indians and their cooccurrence distillation of individual tribal characteristics into one pan-Indian consciousness."[10]