Sherman Alexie

Alexie on the Kindle

Kate Fort

There’s been a lot of debate and discussion lately about the Kindle, Amazon.com and the fate of the printed book.  Sherman Alexie weighed in on the inequity of the Kindle recently, and gave an interesting interview clarifying his concerns.

From Ed Champion’s blog:

As noted by Kassia Kroszer and others, Sherman Alexie recently expressed some controversial remarks in relation to the eReader. At a BookExpo panel, Alexie called the Amazon Kindle “elitist” and said that he wanted to hit a woman sitting on a plane who was using a Kindle on her flight to New York.

Now since I’m a man known to make extraordinary statements myself, I recognized Alexie’s pugilistic promise as the conversational theater he intended. Nevertheless, I was baffled by Alexie’s position. So I took it upon myself to contact Alexie to figure out where the guy was coming from. I didn’t believe the boilerplate message on his website was enough. Alexie was very gracious to respond to my questions.

Why do you consider the Kindle “elitist?”

I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven’t yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap. And that’s a vital question considering that Bezos wants to change the way we read books. How does he plan to change the way that poor kids read books? How does he plan to make sure that poor kids have access to the technology? Poor kids all over the country don’t have access to current textbooks, so will they have access to Kindle?

The rest of the interview can be read here.

Sherman Alexie on the Colbert Report

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“The Exiles” — Film Screenings — Grand Rapids Nov. 7-13

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

THE EXILES chronicles one night in the lives of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. Based entirely on interviews with the participants and their friends, the film follows a group of exiles — transplants from Southwest reservations — as they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance.

Filmmaker Kent Mackenzie first conceived of The Exiles during the making of his short film Bunker Hill—1956 while a student at the University of Southern California. In July 1957, Mackenzie began to hang around with some of the young Indians in downtown Los Angeles. After a couple of months, he broached the subject of making a film that would present a realistic portrayal of Indian life in the community.

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Sherman Alexie in the Classroom

Kate Fort

Turtle Talk favorite Sherman Alexie is in the news again, this time as the focus of a textbook for high school English teachers.  From Jodi Rave at the Missoulian.  H/T Indianz.

Native insight: Textbook guides teachers on author’s racial messages

It ain’t easy being Indian. So says one of America’s premier Native writers of contemporary Indian life.

To help explain the racial complexities that permeate Sherman Alexie’s work, a textbook for teachers, “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” was recently published to help educators explore Native Americana in modern times, stories often told by Alexie with an acerbic twist.

To wit, says Alexie: “I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been ‘soiled’ by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece. I hated those Indians just as much as John Wayne did.”

So why would an Indian hate Indians?

English literature professors and teachers Heather Bruce, Anna Baldwin and Christabel Umphrey explain this paradox in “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” a high school literature series published by the National Council of Teachers of English. The text examines Alexie’s provocative body of work, ranging from poetry and novels to film scripts.

Sherman Alexie in The Stranger

Kate Fort2 Comments

An interview with Sherman Alexie, by Paul Constant in The Stranger:

H/T Indianz.com

It’s difficult to imagine Sherman Alexie as a tiny infant, fragile and vulnerable on the operating table in the shadow of a dire prognosis, although that’s where his life story began. He was born with hydrocephalus—water on the brain—and after a complex and risky brain operation at 6 months old, doctors believed he wouldn’t survive. Four decades later, nothing about him seems weak. He is tall and broad and seems made of denser material than everybody else. And he’s loud. When he laughs, he throws his head back and you can almost see the happy noise emanating outward in concentric circles. Continue reading →

Sherman Alexie’s “Sixty-One Things I Learned During the Sonics Trial”

Kate Fort

Sherman Alexie’s column about his testimony in the Sonics trial, and his feelings about the Sonics leaving Seattle, from The Stranger, in Seattle:

These are the last 61 things that I will say about the Seattle Sonics. No, that’s a lie. These are the last 61 things that I will say until I think of some other things a few months down the road.

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Barbara Atwood (Arizona) on ICWA

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Barbara Atwood has just posted, “The Voice of the Indian Child: Enhancing the Indian Child Welfare Act through Children’s Participation” on SSRN.

From the abstract:

This essay explores the promise and challenge of giving more prominence to the child’s voice in ICWA proceedings in state courts. I identify legal sources of the child’s right of participation in statutory provisions, constitutional law, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and tribal law. The Essay also explores the considerable challenges facing representatives for children who are the subect of ICWA proceedings. Using selected cases for illustration, I argue that incorporating children’s views in the ICWA calculus would move ICWA litigation toward a culture of respect for the dignity of each child and would enrich the decision-making of state court judges.

Indian Frauds: “The Education of Little Tree” and Oprah’s Book Club

Matthew L.M. Fletcher18 Comments

From reznet:

The Education of Oprah Winfrey

By Hillel Italie

NEW YORK (AP) — Oprah Winfrey has pulled a discredited children’s book, Forrest Carter’s “The Education of Little Tree,” from a list of recommended titles on her Web site, blaming an archival “error” for including a work considered the literary hoax of a white supremacist.

“The archived listing was posted in error and has been removed,” Winfrey spokeswoman Angela DePaul told the Associated Press, adding that she did not know long “Little Tree” had been on the site.

The AP had inquired about “The Education of Little Tree,” which was featured on the “Oprah’s Favorite Books” page her Web site, with “The Color Purple,” “The Grapes of Wrath” and other “guaranteed page-turners from Oprah’s personal collection.” The list can also be linked to in-store computer searches at Barnes & Noble.

First published in 1976, “The Education of Little Tree” was supposedly the real-life story of an orphaned boy raised by his Cherokee grandparents; the book became a million seller and sentimental favorite. In 1991, the American Booksellers Association gave “Little Tree” its first-ever ABBY award, established “to honor the ‘hidden treasures’ that ABA bookstore members most enjoyed recommending.”

But suspicions about Carter, who died in 1979, began in his lifetime and were raised significantly in the early 1990s, not long after the book won the ABBY. Carter was identified as Asa Earl Carter, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and speechwriter for former Alabama governor George Wallace who wrote Wallace’s infamous vow: “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

“‘Little Tree’ is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist,” says author Sherman Alexie, whose books include “Ten Little Indians” and the young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which won a National Book Award for young people’s literature Nov. 14.

“I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it,” says Lorene Roy, president of the American Library Association. “Besides the questions about the author’s identity, the book is known for a simplistic plot that used a lot of stereotypical imagery.”

Winfrey had long been aware of the book’s background and has acknowledged she once was a fan. She discussed “Little Tree” on her TV show in 1994, recalling a “loving story about a boy growing up with his grandfather and learning about nature and speaking to the trees. And it’s very spiritual.”

When Winfrey learned the truth about Carter, she felt she “had to take the book off my shelf.”

“I no longer — even though I had been moved by the story — felt the same about this book,” she said in 1994. “There’s a part of me that said, ‘Well, OK, if a person has two sides of them and can write this wonderful story and also write the segregation forever speech, maybe that’s OK.’ But I couldn’t — I couldn’t live with that.”

According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, “Little Tree” has sold about 11,000 copies in 2007. It was originally released by the Delacorte Press, then reissued a decade later by the University of New Mexico Press, which still publishes the book.

Winfrey has endorsed at least one other work that was eventually disputed: James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” a memoir of addiction and recovery that she chose for her book club in 2005. After learning the book contained extensive fabrications, Winfrey chewed out the author on her show, but never withdrew her pick. “A Million Little Pieces” is still listed on her Web site.

Sherman Alexie @ EMU Tonight

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Sherman Alexie will be speaking in Ypsilanti at the EMU Student Center Grand Ballroom at 5 PM. His talk is: “Sherman Alexie: Without Reservations: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic & Highly Irreverent Look at the World.”