This is the first book by Sherman Alexie that I have read, so I cannot compare it with any of his other works. It is a mixed bag of poetry, some of it lyrical and serious, and some of it rather insane, outrageous and raunchy/racy. However, I found myself laughing out loud at some of the poems and...
“The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from the...
Sherman Alexie is a bigot and a prophet and a warrior and a poet. His stories don’t so much predict the future as they explain the present. Suggesting how the past got us here, these stories go on to erase all conclusions about the past and then make more and then erase those, too. As a writer Al...
Alexie's collection of linked short stories is a tale of life on an Indian reservation; it is an exploration of the ways in which Indians deal with the pains and the joys of their lives (storytelling, dance, basketball, food, alcohol); it is a reflection on the relationship between past, present,...
Much like Vonnegut, Sherman Alexie has a knack for fusing humor and sadness in such a way that it underscores how both elements underlie most aspects of life. In one story, a woman admits to her husband she has had an affair. In the midst of his hurt and confusion upon finding this out, he envisi...
I really don't know how to write a review that will do this book justice. All I know is that I laughed, I cried, then I laughed some more. And this review will be my feeble attempt to convey the genius of Sherman Alexie's writing. While this is my first Alexie book, it most certainly will not be ...
But I realized that I hadn’t grabbed my keys. At that kind of moment, a person begins to realize how he can be fooled by his own games. And at that kind of moment, a person begins to formulate a new game to compensate for the failure of the first.“Honey, I’m home,” I yelled as I walked back into ...
Or 1972. Perhaps as late as 1978. The white stranger would see over two hundred Indians dancing. A white stranger might have assumed the Indians were celebrating something special, and they were. Mick had opened the bar, despite the Indian Killer scare, and was pulling in the dough. The Indians w...
We students didn’t think positively or negatively about this situation. We barely had any interaction with the holy women, though a few of us took to shouting, “Get thee to a nunnery!” at one another—but never at the nuns—after we took a Shakespeare class. I’m sure the nuns must have heard us sho...