ipl-logo

Summary Of The Native American Broadcasting System By Sherman Alexie

8183 Words33 Pages

Sherman Alexie is a Native American poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, comedian, filmmaker and scriptwriter. He represents the second generation of Native American writers who have become prominent in the 1990s. He is the most recognized, prolific, and critically acclaimed author in modern Native American literature. He has been described by David Moore as "the reigning world heavyweight poetry bout champion in the second generation of Native American literary renaissance begun in the 1960s".1 Alexie was born on October 7, 1966, in the town of Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington State. Alexie's father, Sherman Sr., is from the Native American tribe of Coeur d'Alene. He occasionally worked as a logger …show more content…

He is pointing out how Native Americans have been bought via the products of white culture: cigarettes, coffee, sugar, alcohol, and food supplies. The prose poem "The Native American Broadcasting System” shows Alexie's use of irony to address the issue of alcohol abuse: NEWS BULLETIN: The Adolph Coors Corporation is sponsoring a new promotional contest. On the bottom inside of every beer can and bottle, Coors had printed a single letter. The first Indian to collect and spell out the word RESERVATION will receive a train ticket for a special traveling back 555 years. (FIOM, 85) The huge corporation, the Adolph Coors Corporation, which symbolically represents white America's economic power, is promoting a contest that involves loads of drinking. Furthermore, if one could spell out the word that represents Native American suffering best, 'RESERVATION', he is awarded the grand prize of a trip back to the time when the earliest settlers colonized North America. So much can be seen in this brief passage: Alexie establishes the awful results of the historical abuses brought on by the introduction of European goods to Native American culture as he illustrates the power and control of the colonizers over the Native …show more content…

I remember you were so proud you knew a foreign language. I remember I told you English was your foreign language and you left again."(BFD, 21) Alexie is concerned with the fragmented, often alienated “bicultural” lives of such characters who sacrifice their native identity and culture in the hope of being assimilated in the dominant American one. Those who attempt to become assimilated, according to Elbert Memmi, might behave in this way: They endeavor to resemble the colonizer in the frank hope that he may cease to consider them different from him.Hence their efforts to forget the past, to change collective habits, and their enthusiastic adoption of Western language, culture and customs. But if the colonizer does not always openly discourage these candidates to develop that resemblance, he never permits them to attain it either. Thus, they live in painful and constant ambiguity.32 In the poem entitled "13/16", Alexie envisions a native fractioned identity as a result of the negative consequences of assimilation and mixed marriages with the whites: I cut myself into sixteen equal pieces keep thirteen and feed the other

Show More
Related
1007 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

Read More
936 Words | 4 Pages

As the title of the novel suggests, the color yellow is one of the largest and most important symbols in A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. The color’s effects can best be seen in Rayona with the yellow raft at Bearpaw Lake, but can also be seen in Christine and Ida’s stories. The color yellow clarifies many of the novel's themes, including how each individual perceives the same situation differently, how reality shatters illusions, and how characters seek feelings of internal peace and permanence. Native Americans find symbolism in many everyday objects, including colors. They believe yellow is an opposing symbol, on one hand it denotes happiness, joy, and content, but on the other it is a color of cowardice, deceit, and hurt.

Read More
165 Words | 1 Pages

In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.

Read More
1662 Words | 7 Pages

He writes about how underprivileged his family was and how they “lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear, and government surplus food.” (Alexie 363.) This statement proves Sherman Alexie’s credibility because it identifies his background and how he personally experienced the learning environment in a Native American School and wanted to help other Indian children excel. He writes: “These days I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids” (Alexie 365).

Read More
1353 Words | 6 Pages

The novel Reservation Blues, written by Sherman Alexie reveals different struggles encountered by the Native Americans on the Spokane Indian Reservation through the use of history, traditions, and values. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a pureblood Indian, forms a band with his childhood acquaintances Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin called Coyote Springs. Alexie uses a variety of scenes and personal encounters between characters and their dialogue to portray the meaning of tribal identity throughout the novel. A cultures goal is to prove their identity and be superior to one another; The American culture has achieved dominance through white hegemony while the Spokane American Indian tribe is in a battle of oppression struggling to preserve their tribal identity. Spokane Native Americans are very passionate about their tribal identities yet are envious of the power that the white hegemony holds against them, leading them to their depression.

Read More
1225 Words | 5 Pages

Years of being mistreated and living in poverty from generations to generations, engraves the harsh memories into the Indians from the early ages of childhood. Alexie provides the reader with brutal memories that Wright and Sherman, record company agents, have of the harming of the Indians: “Wright looked at Coyote Springs. He saw their Indian faces. He saw the faces of millions of Indians, beaten, scarred by smallpox and frostbite, split open by bayonets and bullets. He looked at his own white hands and saw the blood stains there” (244).

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

Ansary states, "At school, I always felt gawky and out of place, because my mother dressed me in American clothes, which set me apart, and my hair was still rather blond. And besides, all the boys knew I was the kharijai, the foreign one, and they gave me a jocular hard time about it." (44). This quote illustrates how Ansary's experience in school speaks to a larger issue faced by many immigrants and their children - the struggle to navigate two vastly different cultural norms and find a sense of belonging. This sense of "otherness" that Ansary feels is not just limited to his physical appearance but also extends to his beliefs and values, often at odds with his peers.

Read More
58 Words | 1 Pages

Alexie captures the audience 's emotion in this essay. He writes about how Native American children are very intelligent but ignore the chance to learn, because it is what is expected from them. This part of the essay is powerful because young Native American kids can read this and understand that they can learn and become smart young adults.

Read More
541 Words | 3 Pages

In the excerpt from “the Unauthorized Autobiography of me”, Sherman Alexie conveys to the reader his nostalgia for when he was a child. He also attempts to emphasize that since that time, his life has become more lonely, and that he doesn't have “protection against the cold”. Alexie accomplishes this goal by discussing a happy moment presumably from his childhood, and he then uses an extended metaphor to explain how he now no longer has these types of connections with the people around him. The first line of the excerpt, “ my cousins are good warriors” is a reference to the fact that when he was growing up on the reservation, western movies taught him that Native Americans were fierce warriors. Although this sentence does not tie in with much of the rest of this excerpt, it is important to other parts of the work discussing conceptions of Native Americans.

Read More
1320 Words | 6 Pages

Alcoholism has been the consumption of liquor that can create mental behaviors that become dependent on alcohol. Native American and Alaskan Natives are more likely than other ethnicities to die of alcohol related cases. There are different types of issues that can cause them to led this path. What causes them to have so many deaths related to alcoholism?   Method can be used to identify whether or not they have an alcohol related problem.

Read More
1588 Words | 7 Pages

From the initial settlements of the continent, disease brought over from Europe had severely weakened or killed off many different Native American tribes. Because of this, it is hard to find an accurate recount of native life before the arrival of Europeans making it hard to understand their societies before contact. Disease was not the only major effect on the lives of Native Americans. American capitalistic ideals began to intrude on the resourceful and relatively untouched west. The American’s began to turn many valuable resources, more specifically the buffalo, that the Native American’s used for survival into commodities with the sole purpose of making a profit.

Read More
932 Words | 4 Pages

The video plays on the injustices faced by Native Americans during the colonization of North America to strengthen the modern appeals made by the speaker. Towards the middle of the ad, the narrator says, “Struggling” as images of extreme poverty cuts to an image of a Native American sitting on a box with his head in his hands. Realizing the injustices of their situation, The imagery conveys a feeling of guilt within the audience. Americans took Native Americans land and put them on reservations to be “forgotten” (another one word description in the video). Through these images and language choice, the speaker makes an ethical appeal: many Native American in modern society already live in poverty and suffering, and having a mascot called the Redskins only adds insult and shame to their lives.

Read More
513 Words | 3 Pages

An immigrant's life can be very challenging, as they often struggle to adjust to society. The primary reason for someone to immigrate is to gain access to new opportunities in a new country. Nevertheless, it can be difficult for an immigrant to maintain their personality, culture, and identity in an environment that does not respect their culture. The short story “Montreal 1962” by Shauna Singh Baldwin focuses on what it is like being an immigrant fighting for an identity, whereas Lena Tuffaha’s poem “Elegy” emphasizes that certain individuals are willing to give up their identities in order to be accepted into society.

Read More
929 Words | 4 Pages

Sherman Alexie writes the story “Indian Education” using a deadpan tone to build and connect the years of the narrator 's life together in an ironic way. Alexie is able to utilize irony through the use of separate, short sections within the story. The rapid presentation of events, simple thoughts, and poetic points made within the story enable the reader to make quick connections about the narrator’s life to draw more complex realizations. The art that Alexie uses to write this very short story is poetic in nature through the meaning and structure of his writing. By the fact that the reader can draw deeper conclusions about the narrator 's life from Alexie’s writing is evident that his writing is poetic.

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

Despite the negative stereotype of American Indians, the objections and disapproval of fellow Natives, and the criticism of others, Sherman Alexie went on to become a successful writer that has inspired many. Alexie overcame many obstacles that would have deterred him from his goal, but he was able to remain steadfast and continue on in his pursuit of writing. As a result, he has published many literary works that include several short stories, poems, and a variety of novels. He allows his culture to seep into his writing, and continues to inspire young American Indians who also desire the path of knowledge.

Read More

More about Summary Of The Native American Broadcasting System By Sherman Alexie

Related Topics

Open Document