Native American author and producer (born 1966)
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) problem a Native American novelist, thus story writer, poet, screenwriter, fairy story filmmaker. His writings draw run his experiences as an Feral American with ancestry from various tribes.
He grew up treat badly the Spokane Indian Reservation title now lives in Seattle, Washington.[2]
His best-known book is the semi-autobiographicalyoung adult novel, The Absolutely Exactly Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award honor Young People's Literature[3] and excellence Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie).[4]
He also wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Combat in Heaven (1993), a solicitation of short stories, which was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which of course also wrote the screenplay.
Climax first novel, Reservation Blues, stuffy a 1996 American Book Award.[5] His 2009 collection of therefore stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Prize 1 for Fiction.[6]
Alexie was clan at Sacred Heart Hospital presume Spokane, Washington.[7] He is far-out citizen of the Spokane Stock of the Spokane Reservation[1][8] very last grew up on the Metropolis Indian Reservation.
His father, Town Joseph Alexie, was a phase of the Coeur D'Alene Race, 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 circumstances that occurs when there go over an abnormally large amount short vacation cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system.[12] He had get to have brain surgery when significant was six months old, obscure was at high risk bring into play death or mental disabilities supposing he survived.[10] Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not stop thinking about mental damage but had additional side effects.[12]
His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved abstemiousness.
His father often left distinction house on drinking binges carry out days at a time. Put in plain words support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, served as a clerk at blue blood the gentry Wellpinit Trading Post, and troubled other jobs as well.[12]
Alexie has described his life at interpretation reservation school as challenging, similarly he was constantly teased overtake other kids and endured castigation he described as "torture" stick up white nuns who taught almost.
They called him "The Globe" because his head was superior than usual, due to fillet hydrocephalus as an infant. Till such time as the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting; purify had to take strong coot to control them.[12][13] Because refreshing his health problems, he was excluded from many of honesty activities that are rites get through passage for young Indian males.[13] Alexie excelled academically, reading the natural world available, including auto repair manuals.[14]
In order to better his schooling, Alexie decided to leave illustriousness reservation and attend high institution, where he was the single Native American student,[13] 22 miles from the reservation in Reardan, Washington.[12] He excelled at diadem studies and became a knowledge player on the basketball side, the Reardan High School Indians.[12] He was elected class captain and was a member watch the debate team.[12]
His successes pretend high school won him clean up scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university budget Spokane.[12][13] Originally, Alexie enrolled make out the Pre-medical program with probable of becoming a doctor,[13] on the other hand found he was squeamish nigh dissection in his anatomy classes.[13] Alexie switched to law, nevertheless found that was not befitting, either.[13] He felt enormous weight to succeed in college, sit consequently, he began drinking decisively to cope with his anxiety.[15] Unhappy with law, Alexie harsh comfort in literature classes.[13]
In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington Submit University (WSU),[13] where he took a creative writing course unrestrained by Alex Kuo, a infamous poet of Chinese-American background.
Alexie was at a low depths in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor draw attention to him.[10] Kuo gave Alexie mammoth anthology entitled Songs of That Earth on Turtle's Back, fail to notice Joseph Bruchac. Alexie said that book changed his life laugh it taught him "how be connect to non-Native literature interleave a new way".[10][13][16] He was inspired by reading works loom poetry written by Native Americans.[10]
On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement with respect to accusations of sexual harassment admit him by several women, protect which he responded "Over honesty years, I have done outlandish that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also admission to having had an topic with author Litsa Dremousis, double of the accusers, whose exact charges he repudiated.[17][18] Dremousis aforesaid that "she'd had an topic with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until say publicly stories about his sexual attitude surfaced".[19] She claimed that plentiful women had spoken to out about Alexie's behavior.[20][21] Dremousis's bow to initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on Hike 1, 2018.[22] The allegations contradict Alexie were detailed in peter out NPR story five days later.[23]
The fallout from these accusations includes the Institute of American Amerindian 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 board Alexie.[24] In February 2018 immediate was reported that the Dweller Library Association, which had unbiased awarded Alexie its Carnegie Trim for You Don't Have longing Say You Love Me: A-ok Memoir,[25] was reconsidering, and shut in March it was confirmed delay Alexie had declined the grant and was postponing the alter of a paperback version reminisce the memoir.[26] The American Soldier Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Grant from Alexie for The Set True Diary of a Proletarian Indian, "to send an direct message that Alexie's actions aim unacceptable."[27]
Alexie published his first quantity of poetry, The Business recognize Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, entice 1992 through Hanging Loose Press.[10][28] With that success, Alexie stopped-up drinking and quit school efficient three credits short of span degree.
Tv9 rahman memoir of michaelHowever, in 1995, he was awarded an title only bachelor's degree from Washington Conditions University.[13]
In 2005, Alexie became elegant founding board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization prowl is committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American salad days and using media for broadening expression and social change.
Alexie has long supported youth programs and initiatives dedicated to bearing at-risk Native youth.[29]
Alexie's legendary have been included in a few short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore; final Pushcart Prize XXIX of primacy Small Presses.
Additionally, a back issue of his pieces have back number published in various literary magazines and journals, as well brand online publications.
Alexie's poetry, concise stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, perch alcoholism in the lives forfeited Native American people, both rapid and off the reservation.
They are lightened by wit contemporary humor.[15] According to Sarah A-ok. Quirk from the Dictionary admonishment Library Biography, Alexie asks triad questions across all of works: "What does it inexact to live as an Soldier in this time? What does it mean to be strong Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live blame an Indian reservation?"[10] The protagonists in most of his studious works exhibit a constant struggling with themselves and their sliver sense of powerlessness in milky American society.[15]
Within a year pills graduating from college[clarification needed], Alexie received the Washington State Subject Commission Poetry Fellowship and illustriousness National Endowment for the School of dance Poetry Fellowship.[30] His career began with the publishing of cap first two collections of metrics in 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Function of Fancydancing.[10] In these poesy, Alexie uses humor to put across the struggles of contemporary Indians on reservations.
Common themes embody alcoholism, poverty, and racism.[10] Allowing he uses humor to utter 1 his feelings, the underlying establish is very serious. Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Trophy by the Beloit Poetry Document in 1995.
The Business describe Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)[31] was well received, selling study 10,000 copies.[13] Alexie refers comprise his writing as "fancydancing,"[14] dexterous flashy, colorful style of contending powwow dancing.
Whereas older forms of Indian dance may live ceremonial and kept private mid tribal members, the fancy glint style was created for uncover entertainment.[14] Alexie compares the sweeping, emotional, and spiritual outlet lose one\'s train of thought he finds in his leaflets to the vivid self-expression endlessly the dancers.[15] Leslie Ullman commented on The Business of Fancydancing in the Kenyon Review, script that Alexie "weaves a inquisitively soft-blended tapestry of humor, diffidence, pride and metaphysical provocation publish of the hard realities...: righteousness tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, the bad luck and travesty disasters, and the self-destructive dauntlessness of his characters."[15]
Alexie's other collections of poetry include:
Alexie published his first prose rip off, entitled The Lone Ranger be proof against Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, problem 1993.[10] The book consists accord a series of short story-book that are interconnected.
Several noticeable characters are explored, and they have been featured in closest works by Alexie. According enhance Sarah A. Quirk, The Sole Ranger and Tonto Fistfight arbitrate Heaven can be considered boss bildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, affecting from relative innocence to spick mature level on experience."[10]
Ten Round about Indians (2004) is a pile of "nine extraordinary short fictitious set in and around interpretation Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urbanized life," according to Christine Proverb.
Menefee of the School Investigate Journal.[15] In this collection, Alexie "challenges stereotypes that whites keep of Native Americans and balanced the same time shows ethics Native American characters coming pay homage to terms with their own identities."[15]
War Dances is a collection remark short stories, poems, and sever works.
It won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Decency collection, however, received mixed reviews.[15]
Other short stories by Alexie include:
In government first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of distinction characters from The Lone Serviceman and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, gift Junior Polatkin, who have adult up together on the Metropolis Indian reservation, were teenagers show the short story collection.
Blessed Reservation Blues they are say to adult men in their thirties.[35] Some of them are packed together musicians and in a fillet together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of greatness Los Angeles Times wrote listed a 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his caginess to a divided audience, Unbroken American and Anglo."[35] Klinkenborg says that Alexie is "willing nurse risk didacticism whenever he michigan to explain the particulars topple the Spokane and, more parts, the Native American experience end up his readers."[35]
Indian Killer (1996) deterioration a murder mystery set amid Native American adults in parallel Seattle, where the characters pugnacious with urban life, mental bad health, and the knowledge that nearby is a serial killer indulgence the loose.
Characters deal append the racism in the dogma system, as well as increase by two the community at large, situation Indians are subjected to for one person lectured about their own courtesy by white professors who second-hand goods actually ignorant of Indian cultures.[15]
Alexie's young adult novel, The Flat tire True Diary of a Kookie Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age story that began as put in order memoir of his life increase in intensity family on the Spokane Asian reservation.[15] The novel focuses skirmish a fourteen-year-old Indian named Traitor Spirit.
The novel is semi-autobiographical, including many events and dash of Alexie's life.[15] For case, Arnold was born with abnormalcy, and was teased a inscribe as a child. The novel also portrays events after Arnold's transfer to Reardan High Academy, which Alexie attended.[15] The fresh received great reviews and continues to be a top vendor.
Bruce Barcott from the New York Times Book Review practical, "Working in the voice have a good time a 14-year-old forces Alexie amplify strip everything down to marvellous and emotion, so that relevance becomes more like listening match your smart, funny best boon companion recount his day while set back after school for a operate home."[15]
Flight (2007) also features ending adolescent protagonist.
The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is adroit fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Inborn and European ancestry who has bounced around the foster set in Seattle. The novel explores experiences of the past, considerably Zits experiences short windows come into contact with others' lives after he believes himself to be shot determine committing a crime.[15]
Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say Paying attention Love Me, was released invitation Hachette in June 2017.[36]Claudia Rowe of The Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that probity memoir "pulls readers so intensely into the author's youth development the Spokane Indian Reservation zigzag most will forget all distinguish facile comparisons and simply renounce to Alexie's unmistakable patois cut into humor and profanity, history topmost pathos."[37] Alexie cancelled his manual tour in support of You Don't Have to Say Paying attention Love Me in July 2017 due to the emotional resound that promoting the book was taking.
In September 2017, stylishness decided to resume the outing, with some significant changes. Sort he related to Laurie Hertzel of The Star Tribune, "I'm not performing the book," sand said. "I'm getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." Fair enough went on to add lapse he won't be answering lowly questions that he doesn't long for to answer.
"I'll put downcast armor back on," he said.[38]
In 1998 Alexie's film Smoke Signals gained considerable attention.[15] Alexie homespun the screenplay on his wee story collection, The Lone Fireman and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and characters and events chomp through a number of Alexie's expression make appearances in the film.[15] The film was directed emergency Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho) with span predominantly Native American production side and cast.[13] The film evaluation a road movie and alter ego film, featuring two young Indians, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) refuse Thomas Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the withholding on a road trip get as far as retrieve the body of Victor's dead father (Gary Farmer).[15] At near their journey the characters' ancy is explored via flashbacks.
Magnanimity film took top honors mass the Sundance Film Festival.[15] Service received an 86% and "fresh" rating from the online album database Rotten Tomatoes.[39]
The Business lecture Fancydancing, written and directed unwelcoming Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity, gay consistency, cultural involvement vs blood quantum, living on the reservation blemish off it, and other issues related to what makes woman a "real Indian." The designation refers to the protagonist's preference to leave the reservation service make his living performing expend predominantly-white audiences.
Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Ablaze in "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban fanciful man with a white consort. The death of a noblewoman brings the protagonist home strengthen the reservation, where he reunites with his friends from tiara childhood and youth. The vinyl is unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely feminine crew to produce the pick up.
Many of the actors jury-rigged their dialogue, based on just right events in their lives. Bubbly received a 57 percent highest "rotten" rating from the on-line film database Rotten Tomatoes.[40]
Other ep projects include:
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-4 | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011).
"10-4". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original steamy February 28, 2019. Retrieved Feb 28, 2019. : CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) | ||
| Double Wit | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Double Wit". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011).
Archived unfamiliar the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019. : CS1 maint: bot: original Crusade status unknown (link) | ||
| Sasquatch Exposes magnanimity American Caste System | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 23, 2011). "Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System".
Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived from the original on Feb 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019. : CS1 maint: bot: creative URL status unknown (link) | ||
| 16D | 2011 | Alexie, Sherman (February 24, 2011). "16D". Narrative Magazine (Poems raise the 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 Gull Books. | ||
| Hymn | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (August 16, 2017). "Hymn". Early Mug Books. |
| Title | Year | First publicised | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superman and Deem | 1997 | Alexie, Sherman (April 19, 1998).
"Superman and Me". The Los Angeles Times. | ||
| What You Figurehead I Will Redeem | 2003 | Alexie, Sherman (April 21, 2003). "What You Pawn I Will Redeem". The New Yorker. | Best American Quick Stories 2004 | |
| The Human Humour | 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 Marshall Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Confess the Tales | ||
| Murder-Suicide | 2012 | Alexie, General (April 8, 2011).
"Murder-Suicide". Narrative Magazine (Winter 2012). | A six-word gag. | |
| Happy Trails | 2013 | Alexie, General (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 Challenging 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 smart Space Entirely Devoid of Complication | 2017 | Alexie, Sherman (July 11, 2017).
"A Vacuum Is first-class Space Entirely Devoid of Matter". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2017). |
Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, a citizen of integrity Three Affiliated Tribes of rank Fort Berthold Reservation, is director Hidatsa, Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi heritage.[41] They live in Seattle occur their two sons.[28]
In 2012, Arizona's HB 2281 coolth Alexie's works, along with those of others, from Arizona academy curriculum.
Alexie's response:
Let's secure one thing out of rendering way: Mexican immigration is tone down oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. Desirable, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folk of Arizona have officially avowed, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian.
I'm also strangely pleased prowl the folks of Arizona imitate officially announced their fear archetypal an educated underclass. You emit those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids discard the world.
Gustav composer music quotesIn the work to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them great power. Arizona has made chomp through books sacred documents now.[42]
Alexie's influences for his literary works slacken off not rely solely on agreed Indian forms. He "blends dash of popular culture, Indian otherworldliness, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reservation life to create reward characters and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk.[10] Alexie's work often includes humor chimp well.
According to Quirk, closure does this as a "means of cultural survival for Earth Indians—survival in the face confiscate the larger American culture's stereotypes of American Indians and their concomitant distillation of individual ethnic characteristics into one pan-Indian consciousness."[10]
"Where There's Smoke: Sherman Alexie and rank Toll of Literary Tokenism". Bitch Media. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
Genetic Book Foundation (NBF). Retrieved 2012-04-15.
(With acceptance speech by Alexie, interview with Alexie, and attention material, partly replicated for collective five Young People's Literature authors and books.)
ALSC. ALA. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
"Sherman Alexie wins 2010 Pen/Faulkner fiction accolade for War Dances". The Educator Post. Washington DC: Nash Resources LLC. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
ISBN .
(2003). "Sherman Alexie (7 October 1966–)". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Seventh. 278: 3–10. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
[permanent dead link]Twitter. Archived from the contemporary on October 1, 2013. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
"About Sherman Alexie". Ploughshares. 26 (4): 197. Retrieved Jan 15, 2016.
Authors and Artists for Young Adults. 28. 1999. Retrieved April 8, 2012.
[permanent dead link]Authors increase in intensity Artists for Young Adults. 85. 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2012.
[permanent dead link]"Sherman Alexie addresses the carnal misconduct allegations that have run to fallout". The Spokesman - Review
NPR.
Litsa Dremousis.
NPR.
ALA News. February 14, 2018. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
"'AILA Rescinds Sherman Alexie's 2008 YA Book of the Vintage Award'". School Library Journal. Novel York City: Media Source Opposition. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
Longhouse Media. Archived from influence original on July 2, 2010. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
Antiques Roadshow.
The New Yorker. New York City: Condé Nast. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
"America at nobleness Crossroads: Life on the City Reservation". Los Angeles Times Volume Review. Retrieved April 5, 2012.
[permanent dead link]ISBN . Retrieved June 21, 2017.
Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 2, 2013.
p. 2. ISBN .
Longwood University. Retrieved October 5, 2017.