An Introduction to Sherman Alexie

1. An Introduction to Sherman Alexie

2. First, on your homework handout choose one of the quotes below and complete a journal responding to the quote – your response should be 5-7 sentences. These are all quotes by Sherman Alexie. • “Poetry = Anger x Imagination” • “The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.” • “Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.” • “If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.” • “We're all travelling heavy with illusions.” • “Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”

3. In your groups you have a few tasks to complete! • As a group, take turns having each person share what they put for 1-6 (don’t do #7!) Share your responses in order. So first, have everyone in your group share their response to #1, then everyone respond to #2 and so on. • After you share 1-6 you will then pick 1 question from your #7 and as a group you will discuss and record how you THINK Sherman Alexie might respond! Have one person record the question and the response. In the end you will answer one question for each group member! Highlight on your handout the question that is answered.

4. A review of Sherman Alexie to end with: "[Alexie] has been celebrated for his barbed, funny, politically charged stories. . . . Tenderness along with passion—governable or otherwise—are elements as pervasive in his impressive body of work as his subversive humor, his grief and outrage over the exploitation and neglect of indigenous populations in the United States. . . . If literary fiction in its purest form is meant to be an accurate reflection of human experience and its inevitable ambiguities . . . What Alexie makes poignantly clear in the stories he has written in his long and robust career is that we cannot choose whom we fall in love with, nor can we choose who, fundamentally, we are.” —San Francisco Chronicle

5. Finally, as a group, read the Alexie poem to the right and record 5 reasons why/how this piece is representative of what you have learned about Sherman Alexie. You want to reference specific items you learned/read about. “Everyone I have lost in the closing of a doorthe click of the lockis not forgotten, theydo not die but remainwithin the soft edgesof the earth, the ashof house fires and cancerin sin and forgivenesshuddled under old blanketsdreaming their way intomy hands, my heartclosing tight like fists.- "Indian Boy Love Song #1”