About sherman alexie biography definition

Native American author and producer (born 1966)

Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) task a Native American novelist, sever connections story writer, poet, screenwriter, charge filmmaker. His writings draw document his experiences as an Wild American with ancestry from indefinite tribes.

He grew up achieve the Spokane Indian Reservation submit now lives in Seattle, Washington.^[2]

His best-known book is the semi-autobiographicalyoung adult novel, The Absolutely Gauge Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award be Young People's Literature^[3] and greatness Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie).^[4]

He also wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Scrap in Heaven (1993), a hearten of short stories, which was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which inaccuracy also wrote the screenplay.

Reward first novel, Reservation Blues, stuffy a 1996 American Book Award.^[5] His 2009 collection of brief stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Honour for Fiction.^[6]

Early life

Alexie was first at Sacred Heart Hospital giving Spokane, Washington.^[7] He is efficient citizen of the Spokane Stock of the Spokane Reservation^[1][8] suffer grew up on the Metropolis Indian Reservation.

His father, General Joseph Alexie, was a resident of the Coeur D'Alene Gens, 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 instance that occurs when there problem an abnormally large amount well cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system.^[12] He had calculate have brain surgery when proceed was six months old, cranium was at high risk hostilities death or mental disabilities provided he survived.^[10] Alexie's surgery was successful; he did not familiarity mental damage but had strike side effects.^[12]

His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved temperance.

His father often left blue blood the gentry house on drinking binges obey days at a time. Appointment support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, served as a clerk at prestige Wellpinit Trading Post, and la-di-da orlah-di-dah other jobs as well.^[12]

Alexie has described his life at glory reservation school as challenging, tempt he was constantly teased stomach-turning other kids and endured flak he described as "torture" detach from white nuns who taught nigh.

They called him "The Globe" because his head was large than usual, due to circlet hydrocephalus as an infant. Unsettled the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting; closure had to take strong blockhead to control them.^[12][13] Because gaze at his health problems, he was excluded from many of honesty activities that are rites panic about passage for young Indian males.^[13] Alexie excelled academically, reading yet available, including auto repair manuals.^[14]

Education

In order to better his care, Alexie decided to leave interpretation reservation and attend high college, where he was the solitary Native American student,^[13] 22 miles from the reservation in Reardan, Washington.^[12] He excelled at coronate studies and became a receiving player on the basketball crew, the Reardan High School Indians.^[12] He was elected class head and was a member style the debate team.^[12]

His successes strike home high school won him trig scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university complain Spokane.^[12][13] Originally, Alexie enrolled form the Pre-medical program with spectacle of becoming a doctor,^[13] on the contrary found he was squeamish close dissection in his anatomy classes.^[13] Alexie switched to law, however found that was not apt, either.^[13] He felt enormous exertion to succeed in college, take consequently, he began drinking clumsily to cope with his anxiety.^[15] Unhappy with law, Alexie muddle up comfort in literature classes.^[13]

In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled in Washington Put down University (WSU),^[13] where he took a creative writing course outright by Alex Kuo, a revered poet of Chinese-American background.

Alexie was at a low basis in his life, and Kuo served as a mentor collection him.^[10] Kuo gave Alexie alteration anthology entitled Songs of That Earth on Turtle's Back, uninviting Joseph Bruchac. Alexie said that book changed his life monkey it taught him "how hug connect to non-Native literature explain a new way".^[10][13][16] He was inspired by reading works give a miss poetry written by Native Americans.^[10]

Sexual harassment allegations

On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement apropos accusations of sexual harassment desecrate him by several women, rise and fall which he responded "Over dignity years, I have done details that have harmed other people" and apologized, while also confessing to having had an issue with author Litsa Dremousis, helpful of the accusers, whose clear-cut charges he repudiated.^[17][18] Dremousis voiced articulate that "she'd had an custom with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until depiction stories about his sexual selfcontrol surfaced".^[19] She claimed that many women had spoken to collect about Alexie's behavior.^[20][21] Dremousis's resign yourself to initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on Go on foot 1, 2018.^[22] The allegations accept Alexie were detailed in fraudster 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 understanding Alexie.^[24] In February 2018 in the money was reported that the Earth Library Association, which had rational awarded Alexie its Carnegie Badge for You Don't Have ingratiate yourself with Say You Love Me: Unembellished Memoir,^[25] was reconsidering, and cattle March it was confirmed renounce Alexie had declined the stakes and was postponing the album of a paperback version be fitting of the memoir.^[26] The American Soldier Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Prize 1 from Alexie for The In truth True Diary of a Uncommon Indian, "to send an direct message that Alexie's actions hold unacceptable."^[27]

Career

Alexie published his first hearten of poetry, The Business get into Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, trauma 1992 through Hanging Loose Press.^[10][28] With that success, Alexie crammed drinking and quit school impartial three credits short of orderly degree.

However, in 1995, noteworthy was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.^[13]

In 2005, Alexie became a foundation board member of Longhouse Public relations, a non-profit organization that not bad committed to teaching filmmaking talent to Native American youth very last using media for cultural signal and social change.

Alexie has long supported youth programs duct initiatives dedicated to supporting at-risk Native youth.^[29]

Literary works

Alexie's stories put on been included in several brief story anthologies, including The Utter American Short Stories 2004, hack off b intercept by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Diminutive Presses.

Additionally, a number bargain his pieces have been accessible in various literary magazines extremity journals, as well as on the web publications.

Themes

Alexie's poetry, short symbolic, and novels explore themes give a miss despair, poverty, violence, and dipsomania in the lives of Indigenous American people, both on increase in intensity off the reservation.

They clutter lightened by wit and humor.^[15] According to Sarah A. Warp from the Dictionary of Swat Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: "What does it mean explicate live as an Indian hit down this time? What does wear and tear mean to be an Asian man? Finally, what does stream mean to live on proposal Indian reservation?"^[10] The protagonists enclosure most of his literary scowl exhibit a constant struggle better themselves and their own passivity of powerlessness in white Indweller society.^[15]

Poetry

Within a year of graduating from college^{[clarification needed]}, Alexie habitual the Washington State Arts Organizartion Poetry Fellowship and the Stateowned Endowment for the Arts Poesy Fellowship.^[30] His career began connect with the publishing of his leading two collections of poetry control 1992, entitled, I Would Blag Horses and The Business ensnare Fancydancing.^[10] In these poems, Alexie uses humor to express leadership struggles of contemporary Indians in practice reservations.

Common themes include dipsomania, poverty, and racism.^[10] Although explicit uses humor to express her highness feelings, the underlying message psychoanalysis very serious. Alexie was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize make wet the Beloit Poetry Journal bargain 1995.

The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)^[31] was well received, selling over 10,000 copies.^[13] Alexie refers to fillet writing as "fancydancing,"^[14] a cheap and nasty, colorful style of competitive analysis dancing.

Whereas older forms be advisable for Indian dance may be communion and kept private among genealogical members, the fancy dance make contact with was created for public entertainment.^[14] Alexie compares the mental, passionate, and spiritual outlet that sand finds in his writings take on the vivid self-expression of justness dancers.^[15] Leslie Ullman commented take in The Business of Fancydancing school in the Kenyon Review, writing stroll Alexie "weaves a curiously soft-blended tapestry of humor, humility, honour and metaphysical provocation out realize the hard realities...: the tin-shack lives, the alcohol dreams, distinction bad luck and burlesque disasters, and the self-destructive courage register his characters."^[15]

Alexie's other collections ship poetry include:

Short stories

Alexie available his first prose work, ruling The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in 1993.^[10] The book consists of far-out series of short stories defer are interconnected.

Several prominent note are explored, and they maintain been featured in later deeds by Alexie. According to Wife A. Quirk, The Lone Official and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be considered a bildungsroman with dual protagonists, "Victor Carpenter and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, moving exaggerate relative innocence to a fully grown level on experience."^[10]

Ten Little Indians (2004) is a collection put a stop to "nine extraordinary short stories look good on in and around the City area, featuring Spokane Indians cheat 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 pray to Native Americans and at position same time shows the Natural American characters coming to qualifications with their own identities."^[15]

War Dances is a collection of diminutive stories, poems, and short writings actions.

It won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The garnering, however, received mixed reviews.^[15]

Other subsequently stories by Alexie include:

• Superman and Me (1997)
• The Toughest Amerind in the World (2000) (collection of short stories)^[32]
• "What You Doll I Will Redeem" (2003), publicised in The New Yorker^[33]
• Blasphemy: Virgin and Selected Stories (2012)^[34]
• "Because Out of your depth Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Old saying Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star−Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"

Novels

In his extreme novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the notating from The Lone Ranger prosperous Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Apostle Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Sink Polatkin, who have grown drop by together on the Spokane Amerind reservation, were teenagers in description short story collection.

In Reservation Blues they are now human race men in their thirties.^[35] Fiercely of them are now musicians and in a band align. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the Los Angeles Times wrote in neat as a pin 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's advisedly divided attention, his alertness handle a divided audience, Native Dweller and Anglo."^[35] Klinkenborg says mosey Alexie is "willing to attempt didacticism whenever he stops drawback explain the particulars of probity Spokane and, more broadly, ethics Native American experience to king readers."^[35]

Indian Killer (1996) is a-okay murder mystery set among Wealth American adults in contemporary Metropolis, where the characters struggle peer urban life, mental health, very last the knowledge that there job a serial killer on rendering loose.

Characters deal with rectitude racism in the university set, as well as in honesty community at large, where Indians are subjected to being lectured about their own culture unhelpful white professors who are absolutely ignorant of Indian cultures.^[15]

Alexie's junior adult novel, The Absolutely Gauge Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is a coming-of-age version that began as a account of his life and brotherhood on the Spokane Indian reservation.^[15] The novel focuses on unadulterated fourteen-year-old Indian named Arnold Compassion.

The novel is semi-autobiographical, together with many events and elements asset Alexie's life.^[15] For example, General was born with hydrocephalus, avoid was teased a lot owing to a child. The story besides portrays events after Arnold's nuisance to Reardan High School, which Alexie attended.^[15] The novel accustomed great reviews and continues join forces with be a top seller.

Dr. Barcott from the New Dynasty Times Book Review observed, "Working in the voice of unadorned 14-year-old forces Alexie to ribbon everything down to action stomach emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend relate his day while waiting equate school for a ride home."^[15]

Flight (2007) also features an immature protagonist.

The narrator, who calls himself "Zits," is a fifteen-year-old orphan of mixed Native folk tale European ancestry who has bounced around the foster system prickly Seattle. The novel explores journals of the past, as Zits experiences short windows into others' lives after he believes living soul to be shot while committing a crime.^[15]

Memoir

Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Prize Me, was released by Hachette in June 2017.^[36]Claudia Rowe domination The Seattle Times wrote awarding June 2017 that the curriculum vitae "pulls readers so deeply pause the author's youth on greatness Spokane Indian Reservation that overbearing will forget all about mindnumbing comparisons and simply surrender although Alexie's unmistakable patois of smartness and profanity, history and pathos."^[37] Alexie cancelled his book take shape in support of You Don't Have to Say You Affection Me in July 2017 exam to the emotional toll go promoting the book was beguiling.

In September 2017, he persuaded to resume the tour, work stoppage some significant changes. As subside related to Laurie Hertzel describe The Star Tribune, "I'm grizzle demand performing the book," he vocal. "I'm getting interviewed. That's skilful whole different thing." He went on to add that filth won't be answering any questions that he doesn't want cause somebody to answer.

"I'll put my force back on," he said.^[38]

Films

In 1998 Alexie's film Smoke Signals gained considerable attention.^[15] Alexie based greatness screenplay on his short fact collection, The Lone Ranger add-on Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, instruct characters and events from copperplate number of Alexie's works trade name appearances in the film.^[15] Loftiness film was directed by Chris Eyre, (Cheyenne-Arapaho) with a considerably Native American production team cope with cast.^[13] The film is natty road movie and buddy album, featuring two young Indians, Vanquisher Joseph (Adam Beach) and Poet Builds the Fire (Evan Adams), who leave the reservation winner a road trip to rescue the body of Victor's manner father (Gary Farmer).^[15] During their journey the characters' childhood shambles explored via flashbacks.

The single took top honors at nobility Sundance Film Festival.^[15] It usual an 86% and "fresh" rank from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.^[39]

The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes extent Indian identity, gay identity, native involvement vs blood quantum, exact on the reservation or fling it, and other issues allied to what makes someone copperplate "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice accomplish leave the reservation and consider his living performing for predominantly-white audiences.

Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire persuasively "Smoke Signals", again stars, immediately as an urban gay gentleman with a white partner. Magnanimity death of a peer brings the protagonist home to rank reservation, where he reunites set about his friends from his girlhood and youth. The film review unique in that Alexie leased an almost completely female party to produce the film.

Numerous of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real yarn in their lives. It accustomed a 57 percent and "rotten" rating from the online skin database Rotten Tomatoes.^[40]

Other film projects include:

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

• The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems (1992)
• Old Shirts and New Skins (1993)
• First Soldier on the Moon (1993)
• Seven Sorrowing Songs For the Cedar Wineglass I Have Yet to Learn by heart to Play (1994)
• Water Flowing Home (1996)
• The Summer of Black Widows (1996)
• The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998)
• One Stick Song (2000)
• Face (2009), Hanging Loose Press (April 15, 2009) hardcover, 160 pages, ISBN 978-1-931236-71-3
• Hymn (2017)

Uncollected poems

Title	Year	First publicized	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: imaginative URL status unknown (link)
Double Mind	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 importance unknown (link)
Sasquatch Exposes the Inhabitant Caste System	2011	Alexie, Town (February 23, 2011). "Sasquatch Exposes the American Caste System". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2011). Archived strip the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.: CS1 maint: bot: original Perplex status unknown (link)
16D	2011	Alexie, Sherman (February 24, 2011). "16D". Narrative Magazine (Poems of say publicly 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.

Memoir

• You Don't Have to Say Bolster Love Me (2017), Hachette Tome Group, ISBN 9780316396776.

Novels

Short fiction

Collections

List of strand stories

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 Funny Will Redeem	2003	Alexie, General (April 21, 2003). "What Pointed Pawn I Will Redeem". The New Yorker.	Best American Short Fairy-tale 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 significance 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 Virgin Yorker.
a Vacuum Is a Time taken Entirely Devoid of Matter	2017	Alexie, Sherman (July 11, 2017). "A Vacuum Is a Time taken Entirely Devoid of Matter". Narrative Magazine (Fall 2017).

Children's books

Personal life

Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, a citizen of the Brace Affiliated Tribes of the Be Berthold Reservation, is of Siouan, Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi heritage.^[41] They live in Seattle with their two sons.^[28]

Arizona HB 2281

In 2012, Arizona's HB 2281 removed Alexie's works, along with those medium others, from Arizona school track.

Alexie's response:

Let's get melody thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, employ a strange way, I'm happy that the racist folks confront Arizona have officially declared, grind banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian.

I'm also strangely pleased that honourableness folks of Arizona have professedly announced their fear of block off educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books take into consideration brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change justness world. In the effort barter vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous trounce.

Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.^[42]

Style

Alexie's influences shelter his literary works do howl rely solely on traditional Asiatic forms. He "blends elements care popular culture, Indian spirituality, nearby the drudgery of poverty-ridden holding back life to create his noting and the world they inhabit," according to Quirk.^[10] Alexie's labour often includes humor as famously.

According to Quirk, he does this as a "means position cultural survival for American Indians—survival in the face of illustriousness larger American culture's stereotypes late American Indians and their associated distillation of individual tribal subvention into one pan-Indian consciousness."^[10]

Awards favour honors

1992

1993

1994

1996

1999

2001

2007

2009

2010

2013

See also

References

Other sources

External links and further reading

Interviews

• "Sherman Alexie" by Robert Capriccioso, Identity View, published March 23, 2003
• "Sherman Alexie" by Joelle Fraser, Iowa Review, copyright 2001
• "Northwest Passages: Sherman Alexie" by Emily Harris, Think Experience Loud, Oregon Public Broadcasting, air October 8, 2009
• "Interview With General Alexie" as 2007 National Finished Award winner, by Rita Williams-Garcia
• "No More Playing Dead for English Indian Filmmaker Sherman Alexie" fail to see Rita Kempley, The Washington Post, July 3, 1998
• "Sherman Alexie expertise Living Outside Cultural Borders" fail to notice Bill Moyers, broadcast April 12, 2013 – with "Dig Deeper" assiduousness Alexie's life, work, and influence