Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr., born October 7, 1966) is an American poet, writer, and filmmaker. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 October 1966
CityWelpinet, WA
CountryUnited States of America
baseball mother player
Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.
basketball native-american player
There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.
mean player expectations
But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.
details known prose vivid writer
Ann Beattie is a writer for and of her time. Her prose has become known for its vivid particularity, the details of the way we live.
almost famous parody takes white
When I first read his work, I almost thought it was some kind of parody by a famous white writer, because he takes so many things from me and other writers.
grew indians native pop
You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture.
But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.
eden garden people
A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.
people
I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.
father home sober-up
My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room.
running love-you men
If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don’t want to dance, then you’re going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.
hands roots hair
she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock
art kids drawing
The percentage of Indian kids doing some sort of artistic work is much higher than in the general population - painting, drawing, dancing, singing. The creation of art is still an everyday part of Indian culture, unlike the dominant culture, where art is sort of peripheral.
native-american writing ironic
Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.