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Sherman Alexie Indian Thesis

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A person’s experience in life and the way they are raised as a child can have many influence on who they become as an adult. However, that doesn’t mean we should be that stereotype that everyone else believes we should be. In the book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a Spokane Indian born and raised in the Spokane Indian Reservation. This story is about a Spokane Indian Boy who should deal with medical problems and his journey to be successful. It hits my passion. I am in school to get my degree in Early Childhood Education. I want to make a difference in those students who are less fortune than I am. I have and still struggle with poverty and a speech impairment but it doesn’t stop me. And in …show more content…

Alexie is a Spokane Indian. Whom was born and raised in the Spokane Indian Reservation in WellPinit, Washington. “His father held various jobs, including truck driver and logger and his mother was a social worker.” (Gupta) When Alexie was born he was hydrocephalic and underwent a brain operation at the young age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. Which this helped him with the book I am reading, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Which I believe is based on his life. The rest of his life doctors predicted he would live with severe mental disabilities. He stays inside and developed the love of reading. Alexie had his struggles from bed wetting, seizures, and alcoholism. He graduated with honors from a high school where he was the only Indian. He did pursue Literacy and graduated in American Studies from Washington State. Alexie has written over 300 pieces of literacy. One of his best-known books is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories. It was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay for this story. Along with a movie that just came out not long ago called The Lone Ranger

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Junior is a young American Indian who had grown up on a reservation in the western United States. As he grew older, he realized that living on the reservation would lead him nowhere. His only chance of hope at a better life is to leave “the Rez”. Sherman Alexie perfectly captures the culture of an American Indian in his novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, by introducing white culture by sending Junior to Reardan High School. Junior’s experience in Reardan allows him to draw conclusions about his own culture and Alexie has surely done research on American Indian culture.

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Sherman Alexie is a Native American man born on an Indian reservation, has earned a BA at Washington University, and has written and published multiple books, novels and poetries. Alexie gives us a setting in Seattle, Washington, where he lives his current life. In this Rhetorical Analysis I will outline some of the Rhetorical techniques used by Sherman Alexie, in the

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Being a writer of many different styles, Sherman Alexie started off as a poet before writing novels and short stories. His poetic manner continues in the story “Indian Education”. He has a wide array of dry statements mixed with metaphors and statements that are not meant to be taken literally. The trend for each years is that he starts off dry and literal and ends poetic and metaphorical. His description of his interactions with the “white girl” in seventh grade is a great example.

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Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education” describes his personal experience as a Native American in the American school system while growing up in the 1970s. In this historical period, many white Americans discriminated against those of different races and ethnicities. In this short story, Alexie attempts to open the eyes of white Americans who do not realize what Native Americans and other groups go through to inform them of the hardships he encountered all his life by utilizing stereotyping and the organization of his writing. The intended audience of "Indian Education" is white Americans who either did not realize or were negligent of the troubles Native Americans were enduring.

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Overcoming Obstacles In Sherman Alexie's Life

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The Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State was where Alexie first began to cultivate his love and understanding of reading. Although his parents were never able to obtain a consistently paying occupation, they were able to find an assortment of minimum wage jobs. This, by reservation standards, made his family middle class, and enabled his father to purchase numerous books that continued to fuel his love for reading. As a three year old toddler, Alexie made the defining decision to love books due to his love for his father who zealously pursued knowledge and reading.

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Summary Of This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix Arizona

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In Sherman Alexie’s story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”, he explores the challenging life of two Native American Indian men named Victor and Thomas on the reservation. The story communicates the childhood memories, relationships, and cultural aspects of Thomas and Victor’s life in Spokane (Indian Reservation). In this story, Victor appeared to be mentally depressed because his father had died just after he lost his job. Although Victor’s father left Victor at very young age, Victor’s genetic pain made him think to travel to Phoenix. However, his poor financial situation left him with no other option than travelling with Thomas, an annoying storyteller and his childhood friend.

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Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

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Part Time Indian

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Introduction The true diary of a part time Indian is a novel for young adults written by Sherman Alexie and illustrated by Ellen Forney, it was published in 2007 and has won several literature awards. The book tells a story of Arnold who is a hydrocephalic, a physical impairment that makes him to be picked on and bullied and which makes him vulnerable to seizures. One of the main struggles that Arnold faces in this novel is between his part-time Indian WellPoint self (Junior) and his half-white Reardan self (Arnold). On the reservation he is intimidated and picked on, while at Reardan he receives respect and chooses to be somebody.

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Alcoholism In Every Little Hurricane And Smoke Signals

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Analysis Of Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie

1121 Words | 5 Pages

In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.

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Sherman Alexie Learning To Read And Write

1358 Words | 6 Pages

He inspired the younger generation, even the students who refused to learn due to the fact that they had been forced to believe that they were incapable of succeeding in school. Alexie was hopeful to save not only his, but also the lives of everyone in the community. Likewise, Douglass’ life as a slave did not interfere with his passion for learning, even though his enslavers made him believe that education was not suited for slaves like him. He also fought the ignorance of his fellow slaves who continually thought that education was not designed for slaves like them because they were mentally and physically trained to be slaves for life. Eventually, he made new friends within his neighborhood as he wanted them

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An Analysis Of Superman And Me By Sherman Alexie

933 Words | 4 Pages

I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open… I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.” Being like Sherman Alexie meant he was neither accepted as a smart non-Indian boy, nor was he accepted as a dumb Indian boy. He was lost in the shadows, to never be welcomed into either group. Which in his case was a good thing, there in the shadows he had even more time to gain intelligence, he could read and increase his likelihood of forcing open the cement door that stood in his way.

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Loss Of Culture In Sherman Alexie's 'Indian Education'

777 Words | 4 Pages

In Sherman Alexie’s short stories (and poems), there usually three central themes that the story rotates. In this paper, I will be exploring how he (Alexie) explores the themes losing culture, a cycle of regret, and using drugs (mainly alcohol) to escape. In Indian Education, the short story, Alexie seems to show that whenever young Victor tries to express himself through his culture, he is punished. Take the section “First Grade” for example. In first grade, Junior (the main character and narrator) says that “The little warrior in me roared to life that day..” and makes comparisons to traditional Native American warriors, such as describing the brusies on the other boy’s face as “war paint” or how Junior chants “it’s a good day to die”, which is phrase typically associated with Crazy Horse, who was a Native American chief.

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Summary Of The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven

462 Words | 2 Pages

Sherman Alexie uses a combination of reality and fiction in order to show the reader what he thinks the lives of people on the Spokane Indian Reservation was like. In regards to what differentiates the fiction from the non-fiction of the stories you could look at present day Native American Reservations. Some reservations are still plagued with alcoholism, and poverty of the past. While the characters and stories are just vessels to deliver the message and show what Sherman Alexie portrayed the reservation live to be. The reaction and impact that this has on the reader is the same as the age-old use of story telling.

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702 Words | 3 Pages

Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11).

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