MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Young Adults in the Writing of Sherman
Alexie
Diploma Thesis
Brno 2010
Supervisor: Author: PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D. Bc. Hana Adámková
Prohlášení: Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.
Brno, 7 December 2010 Hana Adámková
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D., for her patience, kind guidance, and valuable advice. Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 6 1. Children‘s and Young Adult Literature ...... 9 1.2 The Definition and Characteristics of Children‘s Literature ...... 9 1.3 The Concept of Childhood and Brief History of Children‘s Literature ...... 11 1.3.1 Pre-modern Childhood and literature ...... 11 1.3.2 Age of Industrialization and Children’s Literature ...... 12 1.3.3 Postmodern Era and Children’s Literature...... 14 1.4. The Concept of Adolescence and the Development of Young Adult Novel ...... 16 1.4.1 Brief Account of Adolescence ...... 16 1.4.2 Young Adult Novel ...... 18 1.4.3 Ethnic Bildungsroman ...... 20 2. Postmodernism and Postmodern Literature ...... 22 2.1 Features of Postmodernism ...... 22 2.1.1 Refusal of Metanarratives: Subversion and Otherness ...... 23 2.1.2 Fragmentation ...... 25 2.1.3 Blurring of Boundaries and Magic Realism ...... 25 3. Native American Literature ...... 27 3.1 The Beginnings ...... 27 3.2 Native American Renaissance ...... 28 4. Current Life on Reservations ...... 30 4.1 The Concept of Reservations ...... 30 4.2 Reservations at the turn of the millennium ...... 32 4.3 Sports on Reservations ...... 34 5. The Book Selection and Their Analysis...... 36 5.1 Contemporary American Indians in Reservation Blues ...... 37 5.1.1 Magic realism vs. reality ...... 38 5.1.2 Stereotypes Destroying Traditions ...... 39 5.1.3 Warriors or Alcoholics? ...... 40 5.1.4 Native Humour for Sanity Maintenance ...... 41 5.1.5 Lost Childhood on the Reservation ...... 42 5.1.6 Refusal of Identity as a Part of Identity ...... 43
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5.1.7 Native Conception of a Betrayal ...... 45 5.1.8 Relationship Settling Medicine ...... 47 5.1.9 Conclusion ...... 48 5.2 Basketball, Love, and Struggle for Better Life in ―Saint Junior‖ ...... 49 5.2.1 Intelligence is not for Indians ...... 49 5.2.2 Basketball as a Means for Self-Esteem and Recognition ...... 51 5.2.3 Conclusion ...... 52 5.3 Questioning Identity and Sexuality in the ―Toughest Indian in the World‖ ...... 53 5.3.1 Hope is White ...... 53 5.3.2 Tough Homosexuality ...... 54 5.3.3 Conclusion ...... 55 5.4 Search for Identity in ―The Search Engine‖ ...... 56 5.4.1 Overcoming Family Life Conceptions ...... 57 5.4.2 Ambivalent Identity in White Society ...... 58 5.4.3 Obsession with Authenticity ...... 59 5.4.4 Conclusion ...... 61 5.5 Growing Up on the Street and Doubling of Identities in Flight ...... 61 5.5.1 Lost Indian Childhood ...... 62 5.5.2 Television, the Only Friend ...... 63 5.2.3 Fantastical Search for Identity ...... 64 5.5.4 Conclusion ...... 69 5.6 Outsiderness and Betrayal in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian ...... 69 5.6.1 Family Background and Friends ...... 71 5.6.2 Status of Outsider for Pursuing Better Life ...... 72 5.6.3 Red Outside, White Inside ...... 74 5.6.4 Getting Even with Basketball ...... 75 5.6.5 Conclusion ...... 77 Conclusion ...... 78 Resume ...... 83 Bibliography ...... 84
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Introduction
Growing up, adolescence, or the coming-of-age are all terms important to everyone‘s life. Those involved with these terms are caught between childhood and adulthood, and are generally called young adults. The period of adolescence and growing up is very complex, considering all the processes young adults have to go through. To mention just some of the aspects, it is for instance a search for one‘s identity, changes in family and peer relationships, rebellion or subversion of authorities, and last but not least concerns about one‘s physical appearance which are dominant in this developmental milestone. If we consider the above mentioned aspects of growing up and add to them other determinants, such as ethnicity and postmodernity, the period becomes even more complex. This is what Sherman Alexie‘s young adult heroes are. In the thesis I will attempt to explore the identity of contemporary Native American young people. I will analyse selected novels and short stories by Sherman Alexie and will focus on aspects determining the Indian identity. The aspects are family background, reservation conditions, stereotypes held by mainstream American society, and possibilities of young Indian people. These issues involve subcategories such as what it is like to be a member of minority or outsider and importance of sports. Being of Native American origin, Alexie‘s work focuses on Native Americans and Native way of life. Born in 1966, he grew up and lived in the postmodern era. These are presumptions which are both reflected in his work. I will also look at how, or whether, Alexie is influenced by postmodernism and postmodern society. My first encounter with the author came through a different media than literature, though. It was through the film Smoke Signals (1998), based on one of his short stories. Only after this film, I have learnt more about the author, and found his novels and short stories not only very readable, but also a brilliant source of information on current Native American life. Alexie himself explains 6 his literary intentions: ―(...) most of our Indian literature is written by people whose lives are nothing like the Indians they're writing about. There‘s a lot of people pretending to be "traditional"... who rarely spend any time on a reservation, writing all these "traditional" books.‖1 There is a couple of reasons why I have chosen the genre of young adult literature with Native American themes. First, being a faculty of education student and a future teacher, I wanted to focus the diploma thesis on a topic connected to my field of study; second, Native Americans have been paid quite a great amount of attention from the historical point of view. Many popular novels or stories have been about the past. I wanted to focus on current Native life, so that my future students can possibly read and learn about their Native peers and their lives. Lastly, as I learnt in a children‘s literature class and from my own experience as an au-pair, the popularity of young adult literature has been increasing considerably nowadays. The novels and short stories I chose for the analysis are the following (in a chronological order): Reservation Blues (1997), ―Saint Junior‖ and ―Toughest Indian in the World‖ from The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), ―Search Engine‖ from Ten Little Indians (2003) Flight (2007), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007). Since I will deal mainly with Native American literary characters in the thesis, the term ―Native Americans‖, as being the most politically correct, will be used in profusion. Besides ―Native Americans‖ you will encounter also ―American Indians‖, and a less formal term to refer to the members of this ethnic group ―Indians.‖ For Alexie himself uses mostly the later in his writing. In the theoretical part of the thesis, I will discuss the development of young adult literature and will describe the periods of childhood and adolescence. Next, I will focus on features of postmodern literature and society in relation with Native American literature and will also deal with the current life on contemporary Indian reservations.
1 Purdy, J. ―Crossroads: a Conversation with Sherman Alexie.‖ 4 October 1997. 20 August 2010.
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The practical part consists of the analysis of the selected novels and short stories in terms of the issues layout earlier in the introduction.
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1. Children’s and Young Adult Literature
The books I selected for the thesis are mainly for young adults and about young adults. Since the recognition of adolescence as a developmental period was admitted only with the rise of postmodern era, there is not much scholarly literature on young adult literature. And whether there is, it, according to Donelson and Nilsen mixes children‘s and young adult literature.2 Thus, I needed to draw primarily on books on children‘s literature which is not a very big restriction since these two periods of childhood and adolescence overlap and their definition differs from author to author.3 The topic of this chapter is the definition of children‘s and young adult literature. It also aims to provide their characteristics, typical features, and brief history of the genres in relation to the concept of childhood and adolescence from the beginning to these days.
1.2 The Definition and Characteristics of Children’s Literature
Peter Hunt starts his Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism (1992) with a straight and simple definition of children‘s literature: ―Children‘s literature is an amorphous, ambiguous creature; its relationship to its audience is difficult; its relationship to the rest of literature, problematic.‖4 Let us have a look on more pragmatic definitions of children‘s literature. The most common definition is that children‘s literature is for children. However, children‘s literature should not be confused purely with literature about children or written by children, although these categories mingle largely.5 More helpful is to give the features of children‘s literature. I compared children‘s literature characteristics as given in Children’s and Juvenile Literature
2 Donelson, Ken, and Alleen Pace Nilsen. „Young Adult Fiction.― Literature for Today´s Young Adults. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2007, p. 1880 3 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p.12 4 Hunt, P. Literature for Children : contemporary criticism. London : Routledge,1992, p.1 5 Pokrivčáková, Silvia. ―Children´s Literature and Its Study.‖ Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003, p. 9 9
(2003),6 suggestions for writing a successful young adult novel as given by Paul Zindel,7 and characteristics of modern adolescent literature identified by Maia Pank Mertz and David K. England.8 The characteristics and suggestions corresponded nearly at all aspects and could be summarized as follows: - The stories should involve young protagonist and should be told from the child‘s or teenager‘s point of view, so that they attract their readers, keep their attention and deals with topics interesting for them - Dynamic, fast-paced short stories are important - They do not need adults, let alone parents to play the most import role, parents should be in the background to mark the distance between them and the authority; moreover, especially young adults tend to rebel and incline to various sorts of mischief and so express their attitudes toward authorities and they like it in the novels too - As for the language used in the stories, it should be contemporary and based on real children or young adult speech - Children like nonsense, fantasy, and imagination - Both children and young adults are sensory-dependent, they like so- called transitional pictures in the novels, these pictures are graffiti, funny graphics, or doodling; and also sound effects such as rhymes, alliteration, onomatopoeia - The stories are hopeful.
As suggested at the beginning of the chapter, it is complicated to tell where the period of childhood ends and where the period of adolescence begins. This assumption could be applied to literature of these genres, too. There are no definite borders between the genres of children‘s and young adult literature. On the contrary, both genres share very similar characteristics.
6 Ibid.,p.10 7 Quoted by Beach and Marshall in Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1991, p.342 8 Donelson, Ken, and Alleen Pace Nilsen. „Young Adult Fiction.― Literatur efor Today´s Young Adults., p. 1869 10
1.3 The Concept of Childhood and Brief History of Children’s Literature
Since the studying of childhood had not been the main field of interest for a long time and started to be taken seriously only a couple of decades ago9, the same process could be observed within the development of children‘s and young adults literature. Both issues, the concept of childhood and the history of children‘s literature, are therefore discussed together in this subchapter while following developmental phases of the society. Children‘s literature was considered a secondary branch of the ―big‖ literature, and was neglected by both authors and parents10. It is therefore regarded as quite a new genre. It is essential to realize that literature for children has always been derived from how adults perceive children and what position they have in the society and history. It corresponds with an idea of Monika Vosková in that children‘s literature serves as ―a mirror of contemporary society.‖11 To better define the concept of childhood and its development within the society, I decided to use three main phases in the history of childhood defined by Mintz.12 The phases are: pre-modern childhood, the age of industrialization and postmodern society.
1.3.1 Pre-modern Childhood and literature
Pre-industrial society, as Bubíková says, lasted up to the coming of Enlightenment in the 18th century. The life in pre-industrial society was centred at home, in the family. The children and young adults were submissive, were considered defiant and treated as miniaturized or inchoate adults. This period was influenced by a Puritan way of upbringing: corporal punishments, fear
9 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p.10 10 Pokrivčáková, Silvia. ―Children´s Literature and Its Study.‖ Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003, p. 9 11 Vosková, Monika. ―Through the Looking Glass: Children‘s Literature as a Mirror of Contemporary Society.‖ Children’s Literature in English at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Bohuslav Mánek, Ralph Slayton and Pavla Machová. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2002, p.90 12 Used in Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008. 11 invocation, no entertainment, and thinking of children‘s souls as sinful.13 Literature written for children in this period, if any, was then purely educational or religious such as alphabet books, books of manners, and the Bible. Through these books were children considered as ―souls to be saved, or more probably damned‖14 educated. Bubíková continues saying that there was almost no literature intended specifically for children. The absence of purely children‘s books led to the fact that children had to read literature for adults, in other words non-intentional literature, and only later it was transformed and adjusted to children, so called intentional literature. Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe (1719) or Swift‘s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) which were originally intended for adults15 can serve as examples. The choice made by children to read these originally adult novels was supported by the fact that they included exotic settings, elements of adventure, fantasy, entertainment and dynamics, i.e. categories characteristic of children‘s and young adults‘ literature. The childhood in pre-modern era was not an easy period, and definitely could not be considered a careless time of life. Children were seen as small adults and this was reflected in the literature of that time - no books aimed solely towards children and young adults were published. Hence, compensation was sought in literature written for adult readership.
1.3.2 Age of Industrialization and Children’s Literature
The second phase that changed the perception of children and young adults is the age of industrialization. It is connected with the period of Enlightenment and romanticism. Here, the concept of childhood changed dramatically. In contrast to pre-modern era, children were viewed as heavenly
13 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p. 14-15 14 Vránková, Kamila. ―The Beginnings of American Children´s Literature.‖ Children’s Literature in English at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Bohuslav Mánek, Ralph Slayton and Pavla Machová. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2002, p. 113 15 Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003, p.9 12 creatures, pure, and intuitive.16 With the coming of John Locke‘s theory of tabula rasa, an assumption that children have distinctive needs than adults do and that literature should also provide entertainment, play, and pleasure appeared. Thanks to the change in the perception of children, the 19th century was a breakthrough in children‘s literature. It was considered Golden Age of Children‘s Literature. The predominant genres were folk and fairy-tales as the remainders of Romantic interest in oral literature. In the first decades of the 19th century translations of Grimm brothers‘ (1823) and Hans Andersen‘s (1846) fairy-tales appeared. Later children could enjoy for example Lewis Carroll‘s Alice Adventures in Wonderland (1865), stories aimed to girls by Susan Coolidge, and Kate Douglas, and to boys by Mark Twain, or Robert Louis Stevenson.17 The behaviour of children was accepted and admired, persuasion was substituted for fear, and the childhood had been prolonged. Children became an important part of the family and society. Better health service and housing development also contributed to better conditions of children‘s life. This did not apply to poor children who had to work hard and thus contribute to family income.18 The transformation of a child into an adult was marked mainly by the ability to contribute to the welfare of the family, as Beach and Marshal (1991) put it. The era of industrialization meant not only a huge progress in the field of industry, but also had an immense impact on the perception of children. With the theory that children and young adults are not small adults, but that they have different needs and have to be treated accordingly, came also a new trend in literature. It was intentional children‘s literature that reflected the new perception and treatment of children. This literature featured children characters with children‘s behaviour and views on world.
16 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p. 17 17 Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003, p. 24-25 18 Ibid., p.20 13
1.3.3 Postmodern Era and Children’s Literature
The last phase which had an impact on the concept of childhood is the postmodern era. It is an era that started in the second half of the 20th century and has lasted up today. This subchapter focuses on the concept of childhood, and family – child relationships and their reflection in literature as the previous subchapters did. To postmodernism as such, i.e. to its means, features, and manifestations, is devoted the next chapter. Back in the 1920s the role the family played was still immense and a new tendency appeared in the form of scientific advice on parenting that gave parents instructions on how to raise their children from the very beginning.19 These tendencies were, of course, reflected in the literature. Kimberly Reynolds says that children‘s literature of the first half of the 20th century features childhood ―as white and middle-class, it was associated with rural, or possibly suburban, environments; it involved plenty of exercise and fresh air... (and) two loving parents.‖20 The nuclear family was supposed to protect children from the harsh reality. With the coming of postmodern era, there was a great change in the parent-child relationship that led into a new way of upbringing. It had become more democratic and affectionate.21 The parent-child relationship changed in a different way, too. More and more importance has been assigned to peers and the school. At the same time, a postmodern child spends most of the leisure time alone, in front of television and computer. Not only are they alone, but also they get lonely and feel isolated. This is due to a fact, as Bubíková puts it, that postmodern families often consist of only one parent, or only one child without siblings.22
19 Reynolds, Kimberley. ―Sociology, Politics, the Family: Children and Families in Anglo- American Children‘s Fiction, 1920-60.‖ Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Ed. Kimberley Reynolds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p.31 20 Ibid., p.37 21 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p. 21-22 22 Bubíková, Šárka. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009, p.67 14
Postmodern scholars brought in an assumption that children cannot be protected from the reality and should be rather exposed to it, and that family does not have to be only supportive but can cause a crisis as well. Further, there had been another assumption that children could not enjoy their childhoods because the burden of the adult world was put on their shoulders. Consequently, they soon ceased to be looked upon as innocent creatures that need to be protected, or as Deborah Thacker puts it, ―the child, removed from ‗norms‘ of the nuclear family...consumed by materialism and the proliferation of sexualised, ‗adulterated‘ images of the body, has become a threatening, uncomfortable force. Children can be murderers and signify society which is out of control.‖23 Childhood as a careless period of life had also been shortened, according to Mintz, down to 5 - 8 years.24 This kind of a loss of childhood is connected also with themes such as physical abuse, abduction of children, or ―adults‘ inability to retain childlike innocence, spontaneity and curiosity.‖25 The postmodern era is significant for young adult literature because the transitory stage between children and adult appeared. In the 1940s, the term teenager was introduced26 and literature aimed at young people from the age category from 14 to 20 years started to be produced since then. Despite the fact that the pre-modern and postmodern eras are separated by a couple of centuries, they have one sign in common. In both periods, children are seen as impure, and guilty. In the first mentioned era, it was caused by the lack of knowledge of one‘s developmental stages. In the postmodern era, it is, in my opinion, paradoxically because of this knowledge. The postmodern era has offered more opportunities for children, for instance in terms of raising
23 Thacker, Deborah. „Playful Subversion.“ Introducing children´s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 140 24 Bubíková, Šárka. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009, p.66 25 Chalupský, Petr. ―Freedom, Spontainety, Imagination and the Loss of Innocence – the Theme of Childhood in Ian McEwan´s Fiction.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008,p.55 26 "teenager." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004. Answers.com 21 Nov 2010.
15 them up, or in ways of spending their leisure time. Children‘s literature becomes equally diverse as well then.
1.4. The Concept of Adolescence and the Development of Young Adult Novel
Since the books I deal with in the thesis present work both for and about young adults, I find it essential to present the views of the concept of adolescence, too. Being a future teacher, I have gained certain knowledge about the developmental periods of a human, adolescent (pupil) included. I would like to draw on them in this chapter. Emphasis will be put on personality and social development.
1.4.1 Brief Account of Adolescence
The concept of adolescence appeared fairly recently. It happened so in the era of postmodernism when teenagers started to be taken into account. There are different opinions on the age limitation of adolescence. For instance according to Marshall and Beach people aged 12 to 15 are considered early adolescents.27 Generally, when we talk about adolescents, we refer to young people from 14-15 to 19-20 years of age. One of my psychology professors compared adolescence to a bridge connecting two worlds – the world of childhood and the world of adulthood. Young adults come from a known world into an unknown world through the bridge of adolescence which is full of contrast and confusion. From this rises the unstable adolescent behaviour accompanied by bigger sensitivity and overreaction. The imaginary bridge also represents a serious process of searching for one‘s identity. Young adults struggle to find and establish their identities. In other
27 Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1991, p. 335 16 words, they ―attempt to come to terms with themselves and society.‖28 The identity tells them who they are or where they belong to. This is an issue strongly connected with their past experience and with the role models given to them by their family, more precisely by parents. In the past it was really the parents (or siblings) from who came the training for life. Today the roles the parents are acting out are very confusing to follow and as a consequence young adults suffer from many stresses. The stresses can further lead to phenomena such as alcohol and drug use, early sexual activity, or juvenile delinquency.29 What is important during the period of adolescence is the change in family relationships. Young adults tend to free themselves from parental bonds and attach more importance to their friends and peers. Peers become the authority; parents, on the other hand, the target for subversion. Parents are very commonly those who are exposed to so-called black and white thinking of adolescents. This means that there are no compromises or relativism for young adults. This period is also typical for encountering first loves and consequent first erotic or sexual experience. Important characteristic of young adults associated with the first loves issues is the obsession with physical appearance. Adolescents come through huge physical changes that are consequently reflected in their psyche. As a result, they want to look perfect and they measure their own importance according to their look. To sum the term adolescence up into a simple definition, we could define it as a critical period coming out from the transition between childhood and adulthood, and thus typical for internal as well as external changes.
28 Sainsbury, Lisa. ―Childhood, Youth Culture and the Uncanny: Uncanny Nights in Contemporary Adolescent Fiction.‖ Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Ed. Kimberley Reynolds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p.126 29 Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1991, p. 338 17
1.4.2 Young Adult Novel
In the previous subchapter, I briefly discussed the characteristics of adolescence and young adults. Now, I will focus on literature aimed at them. If we consider problems which young adults have to face, the function of young adult fiction should enter our minds immediately. Young adult novels provide their readers with stories and experiences they can identify with. Thus it helps them to manage the difficult period of their lives. For example, while searching for their identity, young adults can experience a kind of fear. This feeling of fear can be described by a term uncanny. This term was coined by Sigmund Freud and can be explained as follows: ―feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.‖30 In young adult novels, an environment is very often described as uncanny. It can be an unknown environment when a hero moves out from home, or even home itself where the hero feels insecure and uncomfortable. Adolescence was recognized and given more attention only in the 1940s when the term teenager began to be used as well as the term ―junior novel‖ to refer to young adult novels. More and more publishers concentrated on literature aimed at young adults then. In the 1940s and 50s in Britain and America, novels which were rather stereotypical prevailed. They featured white, middle-class families with two loving parents, as Reynolds (2005) put it. The novels were still affected by moral tense of that period and there were only a few authors who dared to fight any taboos. Donelson and Nilsen give a list of such taboos which includes: no smoking, no drinking, no suicide, no violence, no pregnancy, no scenes showing young people disagreeing with parents, etc.31 One would suggest that these novels were far from reality.
30 Sainsbury, Lisa. ―Childhood, Youth Culture and the Uncanny: Uncanny Nights in Contemporary Adolescent Fiction.‖ Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Ed. Kimberley Reynolds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 127 31 Donelson, Ken, and Alleen Pace Nilsen. „Young Adult Fiction.― Literature for Today´s Young Adults. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2007, p. 1875 18
Young adult novels written later, in the 1960s and 1970s, were much more psychologically concerned and included also themes and taboos avoided in earlier novels, such as drugs, sex, or family conflict.32 Young adults tend to be subversive in relation to authorities, i.e. to adults. This is given by the period itself and by the position of teenagers who are treated neither like children nor like adults. As Reynolds (1994) puts it, there has always been a dispute about what children want to read and what adults consider good for them to read.33 Later it became more clear that children can find certain value in a book even if the adults finds it a rubbish, and that children very much like books that subvert or ridicule the world of adults.34 The point of view that parents had on children‘s literature changed to a certain extent in the second half of the twentieth century. The parents grew up in more liberal times and thus approved the choice of books their off-springs wanted to read. Nowadays, themes most common for young adult literature could be: search for identity; somebody or something loveable in the novel; fight for the truth and believes; and knowledge that world can be mad and a consequent need to laugh.35 When mentioning contemporary young adult fiction themes, we need to point out a concept of multiculturalism. The multicultural environment so typical for postmodern society is also reflected in young adult literature. Authors of different ethnic minorities began to be heard and wrote about growing up in America as in a multicultural society. Moreover, another perspective from which identity can be viewed is ethnicity and culture. These and other assumptions gave a rise to a new genre, so-called ethnic Bildungsroman.
32 Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1991, p. 339 33 Kimberley, Reynolds. „Subversion and Juvenile Fiction.‖ Chilldren´s Literature in the 1890s and the 1990s. Plymouth: Northcote House: 1994, p. 69 34 Ibid., p. 72 35 Donelson, Ken, and Alleen Pace Nilsen. „Young Adult Fiction.―p. 1876 19
1.4.3 Ethnic Bildungsroman
Since the topic I deal with in the thesis is young adult characters, I consider it useful to devote a part of the writing to a coming-of-age or formation novel or Bildungsroman. First, I will explain the term, then describe its development, and finally discuss its application in the postmodern time. A novel which is considered a Bildungsroman usually depicts the bridge between childhood and adulthood, i.e. the period of growing-up. The term comes from Germany, where the genre originated, and is translated as novel of education or novel of formation.36 First uses of the term date back into the first decade of the 20th century. But the genre itself appeared already at the end of 18th century, when it brought a literally novelty. In contrast to traditional eposes, Bildungsroman introduced young and immature hero.37 As for the plot of a traditional novel of formation, Bubíková summarizes Buckley‘s ideas and says that usually there is
―a sensitive boy growing up in the countryside or a small town, where his intellectual and artistic interests are not understood, and therefore he leaves for a city, where he goes through a painful quest and love- affairs; eventually he fetches through and returns home to show his success and rightfulness of his original decision to leave.‖38
Bubíková further adds that very often the hero is an orphan. However, the development of Bildungsroman changes with the development of society and culture and so changes the motif as well. The changes in society gave a rise to what Bubíková call postmodern American bildungsroman. The prevailing topic of this genre is a survival of the protagonists in a mainstream society. They try to establish their identities in terms of preserving their ethnic or racial roots, and to find out what it is like to
36 "bildungsroman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 6 October 2010
39 Bubíková, Šárka. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009,p. 94-95 21
2. Postmodernism and Postmodern Literature
The second half of the 20th century is undeniably connected with postmodernism. According to an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Mary Klages, postmodernism is a set of ideas that appears in a wide range of areas, literature included40. It is not quite clear when it first emerged, but generally 1960 is regarded as the beginning.41 Since Sherman Alexie was born in 1966, he grew up and had lived most of his life in postmodern times. Many scholars suggested that postmodernism is over, though. De Villo Sloan, for instance, suggested in 1987 that ―postmodernism is a literary movement ... is now in its final phase of decadence.‖42 Other authors even call the period after 1990 post-postmodernist.43 It was the rise of postmodernism and later the emergence of multiculturalism that enabled Native American and other minority authors‘ voices to be heard. Since there have been not many scholarly publications on post-postmodernism yet, I find it essential to devote the following chapters to postmodernism, its manifestation in literature, and its associations and impact on Native American literature. I will draw primarily on Berry Lewis, a senior lecturer in English who received his Ph.D. in postmodern American fiction, and John Lye, an associate dean and contemporary fiction professor at Brock University, and their accounts on postmodernism.
2.1 Features of Postmodernism Postmodern literature as such stems from modernism and shares many of its features. To reach their literary intentions, postmodern authors can use a
40―Postmodernism.‖ Mary Klages. 3 September 1010. http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html, 21April, 2003. 41 Lewis, Berry. ―Word Salad Days: Postmodernism and Literature, 1960-1990‖. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001p. 121 42 Ibid., op. cit., p. 122 43 Ibid., p.122 22 great amount of means. For this reason only three most typical features of postmodernism and postmodern literature, or rather features substantial for the thesis, will be dealt with in the following text. I will discuss the fundamental ideology of postmodernism – the refusal of grand-narratives and related issues of otherness and subversion; the means of graphical and temporal fragmentation; and blurring of boundaries with a particular emphasis on magic realism.
2.1.1 Refusal of Metanarratives: Subversion and Otherness
Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to modernism, a concept prevailing in the period from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. As John Storey (2001) argues, postmodernism is a critique of grand narratives or metanarratives in Western societies.44 Grand narratives are stories and premises that explain a system or culture and are considered as the only truth. Postmodernist writers try to offer plurality. In literature, it means that the authors look at the process of how fiction is written and put it into their stories. Connected to this is the focus on how rather than what is being perceived. Linked to plurality is a means of postmodern fiction known as multiple narratives. In other words, more characters give their points of view and thus share the narrative, which leads to a multilayered structure of the work.45 To deconstruct metanarratives, the postmodern authors can use the means of subversion. Subversion or subversive behaviour is typical for the period of adolescence and as Reynolds (1994) explains it appears in young adult fiction, too. Subversion suggests the idea of paradox, black humour, wit, refusal of seriousness, or turning everything upside down. Postmodern society is highly diverse. By diversity is meant the variety of groups that came out to oppose the mainstream society and its metanarratives,
44 Storey, John. ―Postmodernism and Popular Culture.‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 148 45 Thacker, Deborah. „Playful Subversion.“ Introducing children´s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge, 2002, p.144 23 which has been dominant until the 1950s. As John Lye puts it, he sees as one of the attributes of postmodernism also ―the exploration of the marginalized aspects of life and marginalized elements of society.‖46 By these marginalized elements, I understand minorities, more specifically ethnic minorities, Native Americans included. As Porter (2005) states, the 1960s were a decade when an investigation into Indian life, condition and affairs took place, and was accompanied by certain improvements.47 The marginalized elements of society, in this case ethnic minorities, can be labelled as the other. Mary Klages claims ―that modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labelled as ‗disorder‘‖48, which becomes ―the other‖ in the postmodern world, and more precisely in western culture. ―Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of ‗disorder‘ (...).‖49 People started to become interested in the other, ethnic issues included. They started to learn about minority groups, and did so, as many contemporary people do these days, through a media of popular culture.50 As far as postmodernism and popular culture are concerned, Nigel Watson in his essay ―Postmodernism and Lifestyle‖ (2001) states that in postmodernism it is no longer content that is important, but what matters is the image or style.51 He further continues that we prefer to buy and consume things that are not useful but look good. People are led by a motto ―I shop therefore I am,52‖ but this credo is oblivious to people who cannot afford to shop. They are usually people marginalized in the mainstream society, ethnic minorities included.
46 ―Some attributes of post-modern literature.‖ John Lye. 24 August 2010. http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/post-mod-attrib.php, last updated on April 30, 2008 47 Porter, J. ―Historical and cultural contexts to Native American literature.‖ The Cambridge Guide to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter. Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 57 48 Postmodernism.‖ Mary Klages. 24 Jan 1010. http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html April 21, 2003 49―Ibid. 50 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p. 136 51 Watson, Nigel. ―Postmodernism and Lifestyles (or: You Are What You Buy).‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 57. 52 Ibid., p. 63 24
2.1.2 Fragmentation
The second feature of postmodern writing important for the thesis is somehow connected with the above mentioned tendencies to oppose grand- narratives by distrusting and disrupting them. The author disrupts the narrative ―by breaking up the text into short fragments or sections, separated by space, titles, numbers or symbols.‖53 Other means of fragmentation, as given by Lewis, could be various illustrations, typography, fonts, typefaces, arrangements (columns), visual jokes (coffee-cup stains), or mixed media. Lewis further suggests that fragmentation can be reached by the means of so called temporal disorder. It means that time is disrupted, and the present and the past mingle. Historical figures or events appear in postmodern fiction, which is a feature labelled as historiographic metafiction, a term invented by Linda Hutcheon.54 Temporal distortion can be also reached by apocryphal history, where a false description of a historical is given, and by blending history and fantasy.
2.1.3 Blurring of Boundaries and Magic Realism
The third feature of postmodernism to be discussed is crossing or blurring of boundaries. Literally boundaries between genres are not an exception. Poetry becomes more prosaic and prose more poetic. Also, very often, music, poetry, or art is hard to tell from, and boundaries between high and low culture are blurred as well. It means that there is an attempt to connect and integrate ordinarily lived life, i.e. popular culture, with art, i.e. with the authors‘ work.55 Under the category of the blurring of boundaries falls a genre appearing in many postmodern works. It is a genre of magic realism. Fiction that appeared
53 Lewis, B. ―Word Salad Days: Postmodernism and Literature, 1960-1990‖. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001p. 127 54 Ibid., p. 124 55 Lye, John. ―Some attributes of post-modern literature.‖ Department of English Language and Literature. Brock University. 30 April 2008. 24 Aug 2010.
56 Ríos, Alberto. „Some various definitions of magical realism.― Magical realism: definitions. 23 May 2002. 15 Sep 2010.
26
3. Native American Literature
In this chapter I will look at the development of Native American literature written in English. For it developed differently than non-native mainstream literature. It reflected the historical context and depended on the position of Native Americans in it. I will comment on the beginnings of Native American literature and will devote the next subchapter to a period from Native American Renaissance up to these days.
3.1 The Beginnings
The beginnings of Native American literature are strongly connected with oral tradition in native languages. Native Americans preserved their culture and traditions orally by retelling creation stories, dream songs, visions, legends, chants, or trickster stories from generation to generation.58 Before American Indians started to write about Indian issues, there had been literature about Native Americans written by white man. These writings were marked by stereotypes held about Native Americans and notions of noble and brutal savages appeared. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica noble savage is ―in literature, an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization.―59 How these two images were often depicted also shows Berkhofer (1979): ―Nomadic, horse-mounted hunters of buffalo, who fought and died bravely when portrayed as noble and massacred the innocent when pictured ignoble.‖60 Nineteenth century is considered the dawn of the Native American literature written in English. One of the first literary genres produced by Native Americans were autobiographies and personal accounts which dealt with topics
58 Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p.6-7 59 "Noble savage." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 4 October 2010
3.2 Native American Renaissance
Native American renaissance is a term invented in 1983 by a literary critic Kenneth Lincoln63 and refers to the period of flowering of Native American literature. The crucial literary event that has started off this so-called Native American renaissance was the publishing of N. Scott Momaday‘s novel House Made of Dawn (1968). In the novel, Momaday depicted his life in urban environment and drew on oral traditions. Obviously, he did so very successfully and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1969.64 From the 1960s on there have been changes in the perception of ethnic minorities, American Indians included, and more attention was paid to them. People started to look at history from different points of you, and according to Bubíková, it was ―the revisionist attitude towards history‖ that appeared and helped to constitute multiculturalism.65 This led, after Momaday‘s publication of House Made of Dawn, to a need of other American Indian authors to tell their stories from their own perspectives. As Paula Gunn Allen explained in her introduction to American Indian Literature Exhibition, the American Indian authors wanted to write and started to write literature
61 Owens, Louis. Other Destinies. Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994, p. 7. 62 Ibid., p. 24. 63 ―Native American Renaissance.‖ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 2 October 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Renaissance, last updated 27 August, 2010 64 Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p.15 65 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p.134 28
―that incorporates both indigenous and western traditions…(that) is representative of and central to the need for preserving and promoting a uniquely Native American expressive form;...(that) is steeped in Native American perspective, from mythic history to modern reservation life, deriving its voice from the oral traditions of America‘s indigenous cultures.―66
Native American renaissance was an unofficial movement defined by Native American authors born in the 1940s and 50s and publishing in the 1960s and 70s. Momaday determined the direction of the development of Native American novel when he ―focused upon the agony of the Indian seemingly trapped between worlds.‖67 In other words, Momaday and his contemporaries such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, James Welch or Gerald Vizenor, tried to recognize themselves as Indians in their novels. They also focused on mixedblood issues while criticizing the mainstream society. The topics they dealt with were rather serious. There has been a change with coming of the second generation of Native Americans authors born in 1960s and 70s. They followed the path smoothed by the first generation but started to look at the issues from a different perspective. They still criticize the mainstream society but reserve some critique for themselves, too. The characters of the second generation authors ―can laugh at themselves and others, are fully capable of cowardice as well as heroism, and [their] lives can be every bit tangled and messy [...].‖68 Sherman Alexie falls within this generation as an author who tries to rewrite American history in terms of Europeans‘ coming to America and colonizing Native peoples.69
66 Allen, Paula Gunn. ―Introduction.‖ Native voices: American Indian Literature at the Golda Meir Library. 2000. University of Wisconsin. 19 June 2000. 19 Jan 2010.
4. Current Life on Reservations
It is widely known that Native Americans were suppressed by White settlers since the very beginning of the white settlement in the 16th century. In this chapter, I will focus on the reservation life since most of Alexie‘s stories are set into the Indian reservations. Before I discuss the current life on Indian reservations, I will introduce the history of the reservation concept.
4.1 The Concept of Reservations
With the westward movement of European settlers, Native Americans living on their lands for centuries became an obstruction to this process. A solution how to deal with so-called ―Indian problem‖ had to be found. Founding of reservations was one of the possible solutions. First attempt of how to get American Indians out of way was the exchange of south-eastern Indian lands for the lands west of the Mississippi. This measure was called The Indian Removal Act of 1830.70 By the middle of the 19th century there were calls for better treatment of Native Americans. The calls were reflected in the Peace policy which introduced a new administrative unit – Indian reservation. Reservations ―with definite boundaries beyond which the Indians were forbidden to travel and where they would undergo civilization transformation,‖71 were controlled by agents who tried to civilize and Christianize American Indians.72 Or as Vizenor puts it, to kill their ―indianness.‖73 The concept of reservations turned out to be a failure. The agents were
70 Owens, Louis. Other Destinies. Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994, p. 30. 71 Berkhofer, Robert, F., The white man’s Indian: images of the American Indian from Columbus to the present. New York: Vintage Books, 1979, p.165 72 Fixico, Donald. ―Federal and State Policies and American Indians.‖ A Companion to American Indian History. Eds. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2002, 2004, p. 382 73 A term coined by Gerald Vizenor, Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p.1 30 incompetent and there were abuses and terrible conditions (diseases, poverty) on the reservations at the end of the 19th century. Another disaster in a form of a federal measure - the General Allotment Act struck the Native peoples in 1887. Their collective land was divided among them according to certain calculations and as Fixico says: ―Forced to become part of the larger colonized cultures of the mainstream, Indians were victimized in a numerous ways as, with land to sell and lease, were forced into a capitalist economy system.‖74 It also meant that the land that was not allotted to Indians became the federal land. Fixico further explains that the allotment started off a process of assimilation that ended traditional Native ways of life and that had to bring Native Americans into the mainstream white American society. In 1924 the citizenship was given to American Indians, but it could not hide the fact that the allotment failed causing bigger segregation and poverty. The Allotment Act was terminated by 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Next step in solving the Indian problem came with the WW II. During the war American Indians were engaged in war industries outside the reservation. After the war, the integration of Indians continued. They were relocated into cities. Not even this step helped the American Indian people assimilate in urban areas. The reservation problems were shifted to cities as well and Indians continued to keep ties with their home reservations. Another catastrophe came in the form of House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 by which tribes were terminated.75 It was the 1960s and the Red Power movement that brought certain changes into the United States policy towards American Indians and that woke Native American minority from silence. More radical acts came with the 1970s. It was 1975 when Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act
74 Fixico, Donald. ―Federal and State Policies and American Indians.‖ A Companion to American Indian History. Eds. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2002, 2004, p. 384 75 Ibid., p. 385 - 388 31 passed, bringing Indians control over their affairs and recognizing their need of self-determination. 76 The federal and state policies mention in this chapter had a big impact on Native people lives. Many of the acts, conceptions, and legislation turned out to be failure. Almost none of them contributed to assimilation, almost none of them fulfilled their original purpose.
4.2 Reservations at the turn of the millennium
I said that the conditions on the late 19th and 20th century reservations were horrible. The reservation policies were oppressive and respected barely anything of the native life. In this chapter I will look at the current situation. The situation on the reservations has changed, although not in a very positive way. Since I have not had the opportunity to experience the reservation life first hand, I made use of the information provided by authors dealing with Native American issues and by internet sources. According to U.S. Census Bureau, there were 4.9 million American Indians ―including those of more than one race‖ in the United States in 2008.77 On the contrary, the Bureau of Indian Affairs takes into account only full- blooded American Indians and states that there are 1.9 million of them in the United States.78 Porter (2005) claimed that one third of Native Americans, mix- blooded included, live in reservations. The remaining two thirds live in a city or suburb environment.79 Alexie sets his stories in both. Let us look at the conditions occurring there.
76 ―Native Americans in the United States.‖ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 11 October 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Native_Americans_to day, last updated 10 October 2010 77 "American Indians: Census Facts." Infoplease. 2000–2007. Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease. 22 Nov 2010.
According to Daniel Grassian (2005), drug abuse, alcoholism, and crime belong among major problems on the reservations.80 Half of the Native Americans on the reservations are unemployed and the state financial assistance and benefits hardly cover the essential needs for a decent life. Moreover, the native culture and traditions has begun to fade since there has been an increase in mixed marriages. The phenomenon which influences the lives of most of Alexie‘s characters is definitely alcoholism. It is not only Alexie‘s protagonists but also many of those Native Americans who live both on reservations and in urban areas. It is important to say that Native Americans lack protective genes against alcohol which are important for metabolizing alcohol.81 According to the pamphlet by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for Native North Americans, alcoholism is a disease,82 brought in the U.S.A. by the white man. Native Americans suffer from this disease because ―they feel torn between their native culture and the dominant culture. Many turn to alcohol for the escape from their problems.‖83 In the pamphlet, there are stories of people staying sober thanks to the help of AA. Majority of them started to drink between the age of twelve to sixteen. The reasons are numerous – experiences of racism, bullying, escape from unbearable financial situation, unwanted ―heritage‖ from alcoholic parents, acceptance by the peer group, or a confusion from a Catholic education on a boarding school. As a better explanation of why is alcoholism so spread among Native Americans might serve an utterance of one of the AA for Native North Americans‘ member: ―I felt being alcoholic was being Indian and being Indian was being alcoholic.‖(12)
80 Grassian, D. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.
81 Kibbey, Hal. ―Genetic Influences on Alcohol Drinking.‖ Indiana University Bloomington. 22 Nov 2010.
Death of many Native Americans is caused by alcohol. The life expectancy of Native Americans in Washington State – the location of the Spokane Indian Reservation - was 74 in 2002. Out of all minorities, it is the lowest life expectancy.84 Native Americans use humour which is a substantial part of Indian culture as a means of coping with the reality, even if it is harsh.85 When considering the conditions on Indian reservations, or in some cases conditions in urban environments, one of the first things that comes to our minds could be that there is not much to laugh about. However, there are some joys appreciated especially by young people. One of them is the game of basketball.
4.3 Sports on Reservations
The game of basketball has an important role in many Alexie‘s novels and short stories. Being a critic of the popular culture and its impact on traditions and native culture, he praises it for giving reservation people an opportunity for self-esteem. It gave them basketball.86 The origins of basketball date back to 1891. It was invented by the Young Men Christian Association in order to assimilate and Americanized the already settled and coming immigrants. It was ―a way ethnics could express their national pride and compete with other immigrants.‖87 First it was intended to be played only by passing the ball and tossing it into a basket without the back board. Gradually, it developed into nowadays form. The first basketball teams were just ethnic teams.
84 ―Mortality and Life expectancy.‖ Washington State Department of Health. 29 July 2004. 12 Oct 2010.
Basketball played on Indian reservations is called rezball, an abbreviation for reservation ball. It is based on quick, aggressive play with quick scoring.88 There are dozens of rezball teams nowadays and are associated especially with high schools. According to some North America reservation high school players ―it‘s the only fun thing to do around here,‖ and ―there‘s not much to do on the rez other than play basketball.‖89 When discussing sports, I need to comment on the issue of sport team and school mascots. The mascots are usually American Indians depicted as Chiefs, Redskins, Braves, or Warriors. A board member of American Indian Cultural Support Mike Wicks finds using Indian mascots highly demeaning and opposes the claim of the schools that it is their way of expressing honour to American Indians. He further points out that ―we [Indians] are the ONLY living race of people to be used as mascots.― 90 This subchapter proved the importance of sports, basketball in particular, to Native Americans. It gives them self-esteem and space to prove that they are good. It is wide-spread among Native Americans and the players are equal to their non-native counterparts. It is therefore demeaning that sport teams, basketball teams included, use American Indians as their mascots. The consequence of this attitude could be that people will see American Indians stereotypically as an extinct race, for instance.
88 „Rezball.― Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 10 September 2010, http://www.aistm.org/fr.faqs.htm, last updated 11 October 2009 89 ―´Rez ball´ a source of pride in Indian Country.‖ Indianz.com. 11 September 2010. http://64.38.12.138/News/2009/017483.asp, 20 November 2009 90 Wicks, Mike. ―Mascots – Racism in Schools by State.‖ American Indian Cultural Support. 2005. 15 Oct 2010.
5. The Book Selection and Their Analysis
In this chapter I will explore closer these three selected novels and three short stories: Reservation Blues (1997), ―Saint Junior‖ and ―Toughest Indian in the World‖ from The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), ―Search Engine‖ from Ten Little Indians (2003), Flight (2007), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007). The characters of these novels and short stories feature young adults or adults in their late twenties and thirties. In the stories, however, the author refers to the protagonists‘ childhood and growing-up in a large extent. What all protagonists have in common is the place where they grew up, Spokane Indian Reservation, the birthplace of the author. Next feature that associates the protagonists is their ethnicity – they are all Indians, whether full or mix- blooded. I will have a look at how the author developed their stories concentrating specifically on issues typical for growing up being a Native American in postmodern, multicultural society. The issues discussed are as follows: looking for identity, outsider vs. insider, the role of family, minority vs. majority, importance of sport. It is generally known that the period of adolescence is associated with searching and establishing one‘s identity. This is a very difficult goal which cannot be reached even when entering the age of adulthood. Therefore the aim of the following chapters is to have a look at and analyse how Alexie let his characters approach this important process difficult on its own. The process of searching and establishing one‘s identity to a great part suggests topics such as confrontation with non-Native people and presence of social problems which young people on the reservation have to face. To make the term identity clear, I refer to what it means to be a contemporary Native American, and whether the protagonists feel like Native Americans. Alexie provides us with all the above mentioned issues. He attempts to give us a true portrayal of a contemporary Native life both on the reservation
36 and in the city. As he says, there are not many authors who have given the readers true and undistorted portrayal of the reservation life in their writings: ―(...) very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.―91 In many popular works Native Americans are depicted ―negatively, as uncivilized, simple, superstitious, blood-thirsty savages, or positively, as romanticized heroes living in harmony with nature,― as suggested Debbie Reesee in her article ―Stereotypes children see.‖92 All Alexie‘ s characters are, not always in a positive way, somehow special, and they do not follow these typically accepted stereotypical images.
5.1 Contemporary American Indians in Reservation Blues
Reservation Blues (1995) is Alexie‘s first novel and also the most complex one. In one of many interviews with Alexie, he explains why he started to write the novel: ―I had a two-book deal with Atlantic Monthly Press. I had a one- sentence description of a novel. It was an all-Indian Catholic rock-and-roll band. That's what the novel ended up being about -- an all-Indian Catholic rock-and-roll band called Coyote Springs. The novel was called Reservation Blues.―93 The author once claimed, that he needs to ingratiate with his audience by references to popular culture and media. And popular music definitely is a good way of doing it. In Reservation Blues, Alexie develops a story of a group of young reservation Indians who found a music band. The band means new horizons for the young protagonists who had never left the reservation before. They experience feelings of power, and popularity. These feelings are overwhelmed by those of hatred and outsiderness, though. The novel also reveals what
91 Chapel, Jessica. ―Sherman Alexie -- poet, novelist, short-story writer, Native American -- strikes out at the ´eagle-feathers school of Native literature.´‖ The Atlantic Online. 1 June 2000. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba2000-06-01.htm.12 March 2010. 92 Reese, Debbie. ―Stereotypes children see.‖Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting. 1996.. http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/digests/1996/reese96.html.26 February 2010. 93 Highway, Tomson. ―Spokane Words: An Interview with Sherman Alexie.‖ 28 October 1996. http://www.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/~krkvls/salexie.html. 20 August 2010. 37 contemporary white American society is like in terms of opportunities it offers for Native Americans. Porter briefly summarizes the plot to be about ―the failures and survivals of Indian youth in the postmodern world.‖94 In the novel, I will attempt to find out what are Alexie‘s contemporary young characters like. What is (and was when they were children and adolescents) the everyday reservation reality they have to face and how it is reflected into establishing their ethnic identities.
5.1.1 Magic realism vs. reality
Alexie develops the story by the use of many postmodern literary means. Primarily, it is the use of magic realism elements by which he introduces the character of a half-mythical Big Mom dwelling on the hill above the reservation, and the character of Robert Johnson. Set in the early 1990s, he fictionalizes the character by the means of historiographic metafiction, a term invented by Linda Hutcheon.95 Magic realism is reached also by numerous dream-like passages in the story, and flashbacks into the past. On one hand, it is magic realism that gives the novel a special flavour, but on the other, the novel provides us with a picture of the reservation life. At the same time then, it is very realistic. The main protagonists are Spokane Indians Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Junior Polatkin, and Victor Joseph. Since the characters reappear in other Alexie‘s novels or short stories, he develops the characters‘ stories from different points of view and offers a reader more thorough look at reservation issues. Certain resemblance could be found with William Faulkner, who also set most of his novels into one region. Apart from magic realism and other postmodern features, Reservation Blues could be said to displays some features of what Bubílková calls a
94 Moore, David L. ―Sherman Alexie: irony, intimacy, and agency.‖ The Cambridge Guide to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.p.301 95 ―Postmodern literature.‖ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 26 Sep 2010. 2 Oct 2010.
38 bildungsroman. The protagonists are around thirty years old but their lives and identities are marked by their childhood and the period of growing-up.
5.1.2 Stereotypes Destroying Traditions
Alexie‘s heroes, though ordinary, are somehow special. Thomas, the main character has a special gift of telling stories. By Thomas‘ gift Alexie refers to Native American oral tradition. Unlike his peers, Thomas is not influenced by the popular image of a ‗real‘ Indian – strong, and warrior-like. He is rather sensitive, and does not pretend to be what he is not. His romantic soul and his storytelling, which is rather a disease he suffers from, make him an outsider. He seems to bother others by telling his stories, even though he attempts to help the reservation by telling them. ―Thomas knew about sickness. He‘d caught some disease in the womb that forced him to tell stories. The weight of those stories bowed his legs and bent his spine a bit.‖(6) By the others‘ refusal of Thomas‘ stories Alexie points out to a slow disappearing of Indian traditions. Thomas then serves as a preservationist of them. Here is the point when Robert Johnson comes into discussion. Robert Johnson is a real historical figure. He was a famous blues musician. Rumours say that he sold his soul to the devil and was endowed with extraordinary music skills for it. He played the guitar like nobody else. The skills eventually overwhelmed him and he is said to commit suicide. Alexie resurrects the blues magician and, in a manner of magic realism, makes him a double to the character of Thomas Build-the-Fire. Thomas shares the following similarities with Johnson. Johnson carried the burden of playing the guitar like nobody else. Thomas‘ burden are his stories. Schroeder claims that Alexie places the blues music next to storytelling right because of its resemblance. ―The blues and storytelling fulfil similar cultural functions: preserve communal truths, link artist to community, and
39 pass down tools necessary for survival.‖96 Schroeder further states, that certain resemblance could be observed in the environments of contemporary Indian reservations and African American communities from the time when the blues originated. The resemblance could be found in the conditions including hunger, unemployment, loneliness, commodity food, shabby Housing and Urban Department houses, etc. By giving Thomas Johnson‘s guitar, Alexie shows the connection between Native America and African American cultures. The blues is omnipresent in the novel, since the beginning of each chapter is fragmented by blues lyrics.
5.1.3 Warriors or Alcoholics?
The other two characters Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin are local drunks who gave up pursuing a better life. Victor Joseph represents the popularized image of the savage Indian. He is the reservation bully, who, along with his best friend Junior, likes to chase white women and have them as trophies. He believes in the patriarchal system that rules in the reservation. As for most of the reservation men, aggression and violence become tools of defence for Victor, too. They fight against the reservation conditions, against their despair, and poverty. The character of Junior Polatkin is influenced by popular images and media stereotypes. As ―all Indians on TV had visions,‖ (18) Junior relies on his dreams and visions immensely and bases all his decisions and behaviour on them. Alexie refers to the media image of Native Americans and its internalization even by themselves.
96 Schroeder, Patricia R. ―The cultural politics of difference.‖ Robert Johnson, mythmaking and contemporary American culture. University of Illinois, 2004, p.126
40
Junior and Victor are best friends. When Junior lost his parents when he was a child, Victor became a kind of a bodyguard for him. They became dads to each other. The importance of peers is obvious from their relationship. These three different young men on advice of Johnson‘s guitar make a band named Coyote Springs, and are later joined by Flathead Indian sisters Chess and Checkers Warm Waters. The band becomes popular not only with Indians, but also with white audience. The protagonist gets outside the reservation borders. Alexie sends the characters on a quest for their identities, power, and change of reservation conditions.
5.1.4 Native Humour for Sanity Maintenance
By the voice of a Catholic priest father Arnold, Alexie in the novel says that the Spokanes are merry and funny people. Still, the priest does not understand what the Spokane laugh about, because there is nothing to laugh about poverty, suicide, or alcoholism (36). As Louis Erdrich claims "it's impossible to write about Native life without humor—that's how people maintain sanity."97 Alexie breaks another stereotype held about Native Americans. By the use of humour, he contradicts the perception of Indians as stoic human beings. Poverty is one of the main problems on the reservation, once even ―one dollar decided the elections.‖(46) Hand in hand with poverty goes hunger. Alexie points out to the relevance of the impact television and media stereotypes have on Indians. Since the protagonists never left the reservation, television becomes a medium that shows the disparity between mainstream (white) and native lives. According to Nigel Watson, people marginalized in the mainstream society are excluded from the trend dominating in popular culture – to shop and to be.98 Thomas ―dreamed of television and hunger‖ (70) and realized the difference between white and non-white standards of living.
97 ―Native American Quotes.‖ About.com: Classic Literature. 2010. 22 November 2009. http://classiclit.about.com/od/nativeamlit/a/aa_nativequote.htm 98 Watson, Nigel. ―Postmodernism and Lifestyles (or: You Are What You Buy).‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 57. 41
All he sees on television is white people who have everything. When he eventually comes across an Indian on TV, he is depicted stereotypically as a brutal savage or as massacred by cowboys.
5.1.5 Lost Childhood on the Reservation
Next major issue Alexie introduces is alcoholism. As far as the family is concerned, all the characters lost their parents. The cause of the parents‘ deaths was in almost all cases alcohol. The only exception is Thomas‘ father who is a heavy drinker, and appears only occasionally mostly unconscious drunk. Victor started to drink early, after his parents‘ divorce. Junior had his first drink at his graduation night. Thomas never drinks, because of his own parents‘ drinking. Alcoholism engulfs the whole reservation, and so ―brown-skinned zombies,‖ as Alexie by the voice of Checkers calls them, can be seen everywhere (96). Alexie stresses that not only all the members of the group had run away from alcoholics when they were little, but also that ―all Indians grow up with drunks.‖(151) All protagonists lost their parents when they were children. They could not enjoy their childhood in the safety of their families and had to take care of themselves very soon and carry the burden of an adult life. As Alexie concisely puts it, Indian children of Indian parents are like ―baby turtles left to crawl from birth nest to ocean all by themselves‖ (217). What can be observed here is the motif of a loss of childhood, discussed for instance by Chalupský.99 The postmodern literature brought in new topics, earlier tabooed. Alexie does not avoid them and thus the motif of the stolen or lost childhood is further supported by a memory of Victor‘s childhood. He had been sexually abused by a Catholic priest at a summer Mission School. This experience made him oblivious to Christian religion.
99 Chalupský, Petr. Bubíková, Šárka. ―Growing Up Postmodern.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p.55 42
5.1.6 Refusal of Identity as a Part of Identity
Soon after The Coyote Springs start to rehearse, people from the reservation gather to listen to them. Later, white people start to come and see the all-Indian music band. In the novel, Native Americans are seen by non- Indians stereotypically as romantic and wise creatures living in a harmony with nature. Alexie refers to the fact that many non-Indians are obsessed with everything Indian, looking for the good things only. He further points out to an assumption held by most non-Indians that Indians are easy to fake. He introduces two white female characters of Betty and Veronica who admire the group and want to join them. They wear Indian cloths and too much Indian jewellery thinking this would help to fit in. They could be seen as counterparts, or rather doubles to Chess and Checkers. Chess and Checkers hate white women. They see them as an embodiment of evil as for the racial and maybe even cultural preservation. They hate all Indian men who chase after white women, including Victor and Junior. As Grassian explains Indian men ―are in large part drawn to white women because of their own internalized feelings of inferiority as Indians in a country that implicitly, and possibly explicitly, favours whites.‖100 What Alexie tries to communicate through the opinions of the Indian sisters is the need for preservation of Indian culture, which is diminished by interracial marriages. Mixed-blood children coming out of interracial marriages might suffer more that Indian children. They are torn between Native and non- Native worlds. Alexie, in the voice of Chess, says and expresses certain concerns that these mixed blood individuals will take control of the reservation ―because they look white. Because they‘re safer‖ (283). The reservation is prevailingly male-dominated. Warrior-like behaviour and attitudes are seen as normal. The male dominance on the reservations then reflects into the female character identities. As Chess claims, she was ―all her
100 Grassian, D. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, p. 91 43 life measured by men (212).‖ Whether it was her father, teachers, priests, or God, she was subordinated to them. Since she wants to preserve Indian culture and have full-blooded children, she keeps dating Thomas. She keeps dating him even though she is anxious about the male dominance because her desire to preserve what Vizenor calls the Indianness101 is stronger. Alexie further develops the issue of the relationship between white people and Indians through identity. Chess and Checkers do not wish to be Indian because of their poverty and life conditions. Betty and Veronica want to be like Indians and have Indian boyfriends like trophies. The white girls only want the good from the Indian life. Once Chess said that sometimes she hated being Indian. Her sister responded to her like this: ―Ain‘t that the true test? (...) You ain‘t really Indian unless there was some point in your life that you didn‘t want to be.‖(98) This would mean that a part Indian of identity is the refusal of this identity. Another reason why the Indian female protagonists hate white women is their whiteness. White represents purity and perfection. Whereas Chess and Checkers, when kids, saw themselves unclean because of the colour of their skin. Alexie is stressing the prejudices and stereotypes based on physical appearance and body marks of identity to such an extent that the characters apply the stereotypes to themselves. The prejudices and stereotypes based on physical appearance and body marks of identity appear as major themes in many postmodern American coming-of-age novels.102 The feelings of inadequacy in Indians are supported by Catholic Church. Jesus, along with other religious figures, is portrayed as white. For this reason, Checkers wanted to be white when she was little. Alexie expresses the feelings of the group (and perhaps of Alexie himself) about Catholic Church in a song ―My God Has a Dark Skin.‖ (see Appendix) In the song, the Christian religion is seen as suppressing Indian culture and traditions.
101 Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p.1 102 Bubíková, Šárka. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009, p.94- 95 44
5.1.7 Native Conception of a Betrayal
Along with alcoholism, it is unemployment that is one of the major problems on the reservation. To earn money, Coyote Springs decide to break through outside the reservation. They are invited and play in a tavern outside the reservation. When they return from the first non-reservation concert, they are not welcomed at all. That they left to play outside is considered a betrayal by the other Indians on the reservation. The members of the tribe may feel that the members of Coyote Springs think that they are now better. Since they are an all-Indian band, they become highly popular among white people. It is a fact that contributes to the dislike of their tribe. It is the confrontation with white people through which Alexie further develops the idea of Indian identity. The music is a means of crossing not only geographical boundaries, but also cultural and ethnic ones. Later in the novel, the group is invited to a band competition in Seattle. Not only have they never been to the city before, but they also have never been outside the reservation before. They want to help the reservation to become a better place. As Grassian explains, blues music assumes the acknowledgment of ―personal pain and suffering.‖103 Most people on the reservation are not able to acknowledge their own suffering because of the prevailing warrior-like and male-dominated environment. Coyote Springs wish to change this attitude. The band also hopes to maintain Native culture by the music they play and bring the people on the reservation together. For music is very important to Indians. In order to gain power through the music they need to leave the safety and the known background of the reservation for a big and unknown city. The feeling they have could be described as uncanny, in Sainsury‘s words as feeling of fear and uncertainty. The uncanny feeling is to a large extent caused by the number of white people they see. Alexie, with a typical hyperbolic language, describes an encounter of Junior and Victor with a white man at a rest area. ―On a reservation, this white man would have been alone. In America, this white
103 Grassian, D. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, p.92 45 man was legion.‖ (128) In Seattle then, they were frightened by the number of white people, and Alexie lets Victor express the shock as follows: ―Jeez,‖ Victor said, ―no wonder the Indians lost. Look at all the whites.‖ (133) Coyote Springs won the contest and returned back to the reservation. Still, they were welcomed by hatred. People on the reservation do not like that they came back with two white women (Betty and Veronica), and two Indian women (Chess and Checkers) who are not Spokanes. The Indian Christians do not like their devil‘s music, and the tribal council does not like the idea that Coyote Springs are more famous that they are. Even if the group left only once, only for a couple of days, and the members are still residents on the reservation, they betrayed the tribe. They left the reservation for pursuing better life in a white world. Soon afterwards Coyote Springs are addressed by two white record company agents. Magic realism permeates through the novel in the characters of Phil Sheridan and George Wright again. They are real historical figures known for fighting Indians and slaughtering their horses104. They invite the band to record their music, because Indians are desired ―commodity stuff‖(189). If they were dressed up as warriors, it would increase the demand. This is another example of stereotyping. The protagonists find themselves in an entertainment industry dominated by white mainstream society. What Alexie tries to convey is the fact that the mainstream entertainment industry is a new kind of battlefield where it does not matter whether someone is good, but whether they are good business. Alexie further develops an idea of faking Indianness in relation to the postmodern entertainment industry. Nigel Watson says that one of the characteristics of postmodernism is the importance of image and style over content. 105Mr Sheridan, one of the recording agents, uses the white girls Betty and Veronica and makes a band with them. He dresses them up as Indians,
104 Grassian, D. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, p.95 105 Watson, Nigel. ―Postmodernism and Lifestyles (or: You Are What You Buy).‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 36. 46 darkens their skin and let them sing songs without content. One of their songs says that you can be anything you want, even an Indian (295). Alexie draws a reader‘s attention to the practices common for mainstream majority (white) societies. Majority members think that they can be anything they want and take anything it suits their purposes, even if it is such important and unalienable thing such as identity or culture. The group wants to be a success and wants to return as heroes to the male-dominated reservation where warrior-like image is appreciated. However, there are many factors that make the band fail. Under the pressure of the big city and the atmosphere of the recording studio Coyote Springs waste their opportunity. It is also the change of the group‘s attitude that contributed to the failure. In the pursuit of power and fame the protagonists forgot their original aim of helping the reservation. Rather than pursuing better life for the reservation/tribe, they are overwhelmed by their own desires. Back on the reservation they are credited with the status of outsiders because they left the reservation, and moreover they got back as losers.
5.1.8 Relationship Settling Medicine
The band‘s failure has the largest impact on Junior who realizes that has nothing left and commits suicide. It is not only the failure in the recording studio that leads him to the act. It is the memory of his college girlfriend who was pregnant with him. Her parents disapproved of their relationship and forced her to go to abortion. The reason was Junior‘s ethnicity. They did not want their daughter to see an Indian boyfriend. Thomas, Chess and Checkers, decide to leave the reservation and start a new life in the city of Spokane. By this, Alexie proposes that it is good for young Native Americans living on a reservation to actually leave and try to find a better life outside, even in a mainstream white world. Many postmodern writers, especially Native writers, started to look at history from different points of view. They have maintained so called
47 revisionist attitude towards history.106 This approach can be observed in the novel. After the group‘s failure, one of the agents, Mr Wright, tries to help the group. He explains his behaviour while referring to the acts of a real general Wright. As one person he remembers all the Indians he killed and regrets it. He admits he had been committing genocide of Native peoples. Through the character of Wright, Alexie suggests that white people‘s admitting of their failures against Native Americans could improve the relationship between both natives and non-natives. In other words, that white people should take the responsibility for the deeds and attitudes they took against natives.
5.1.9 Conclusion
I attempted to find out what Alexie‘s characters are like in Reservation Blues. What they are like is to a large extent determined by the conditions they live in. It is not easy to grow up on the reservation where people are surrounded by unemployment, poverty, hunger, and alcoholism. Despite of these conditions and the fact that they are left alone to take care of themselves, the young heroes of the novel are strong. Knowing that they cannot find happiness and welfare at home, they set out into unknown predominantly white environment with a noble idea of helping their reservation through music. Unfortunately, they are misunderstood by their people. For many reservation Indians, any attempt to look for better life outside the reservation, i.e. in the white world, is a betrayal. At the same time, many reservation Indians are misunderstood in the white mainstream society influenced by stereotypes and prejudices. It has an impact on establishing the characters‘ identities. The young people are torn between their reservation and the white mainstream society. What Alexie suggests is that especially young people should try and pursue happiness outside the reservation but at the same time not forget their ethnic origins and try to preserve their culture and traditions.
106 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p.134 48
5.2 Basketball, Love, and Struggle for Better Life in “Saint Junior”
―Saint Junior‖ is a story from the collection of short stories The Toughest Indian in the World (2000). Alexie deals with the growing up of young Native protagonists. He develops a contemporary story of a married couple Roman Gabriel Fury and Grace Atwater with numerous flashbacks into the past. Roman is a Spokane Indian. Grace is a Chinese-Mohawk. The aim of this chapter is to look at the problems Native young adults are confronted with when trying to have similar lives as their white counterparts, especially when pursuing better education. I will also try to explore what is important for Native young adults and what determines the formation of their identities. Alexie develops the story by the means of a multiple narrative, so Roman‘s and Grace‘s narrations mingle. He also applies the device of flashback by which he goes back to the past and by which we learn about the main protagonists‘ youth. The novel is fragmented by temporal disorder, in other words by blending together the past and presence. What can be observed in the novel are features of coming-of-age novel or bildungsroman. Roman is an orphan. He was raised up mostly by his grandmother, because his mother died when he was a little boy and his father died later in a car accident. Obviously, the most important person for him became his wise grandmother who spoke Spokane and only some rough English. Some of Alexie‘s heroes reappears in his works and so do fates of the heroes. As far as a family background and grandmother-grandson relationship are concerned, there is a strong parallel between the characters of young Roman Fury and Thomas Build-the-Fire, the re-appearing hero of Smoke Signals (1998) and Reservation Blues (1995).
5.2.1 Intelligence is not for Indians
Almost all Alexie‘s young adult characters are somehow special. The main characters of ―Saint Junior‖ are very intelligent. Moreover, Roman used to
49 be a great basketball player, and Grace writes poetry. As if Alexie reflected a part of himself into his characters because he used to be a passionate basketball player, and has been a prolific poet, too. In the story, Alexie breaks the stereotypes held about Native Americans. Debbie Reessee claims that many popular works about Native Americans picture them as uncivilized and simple, or as romanticized heroes living in harmony with nature.107 But Roman wants (and possibly Alexie himself wanted) a better life by getting better education. Therefore he strives for being accepted at a college, preferably the best college in the state of Washington, which is St. Jerome the Second University. However, as Alexie portrays, the combination of intelligence, poverty, and Native American blood does not seem to be the right prerequisite for becoming a student at the best university. The best example that demonstrates the difficulties Native American young people had to confront when pursuing better education and consequently a better life is the part when Roman has to endure a biased conversation about his excellent results from an aptitude test. The test is designed to exclude the poor, which Roman definitely is. He is accused of not following the rules while taking the test, by being late and distracting other contenders. By the voice of Roman, Alexie in a witty, storming, and almost breathless way, explains the reasons, which are everyday reality of some youngsters living on the reservation. Roman had to walk many miles to take the test not having enough money for a bus ticket and he also felt frightened being the only Indian in the class. Nevertheless, he imagined the test items are figures such as Columbus and Custer that he needed to kill. Alexie sums Roman defence up as follows:
―So, anyway, I‘m sure I flunk the damn test, because I‘m an Indian from the reservation, and I can‘t be that smart, right? I mean, I‘m the first person in my family to ever graduate from high school, so who the hell
107 Reese, Debbie. ―Stereotypes children see.‖Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting. 1996.. http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/digests/1996/reese96.html.26 February 2010. 50
do you think I am, trying to go to college, right? So, I take the test and I did kill it. I kill it. I kill it. I kill it.‖(171)
Grace, being smart and having graduated from a prestigious secondary school, was accepted to St. Jerome, too. She had to face prejudices as well. Alexie points out to the fact that Native Americans are still considered as primitive and are not expected to be smart or ambitious like most of his heroes are. On the first night at St. Jerome, Grace is asked by a white colleague whether she is there because of any affirmative action. He does not consider her to be a good student. But is it him who got at St. Jerome by an affirmative action, by cheating, and who is sorry for it in the end. By the character of Grace, Alexie develops an issue of assimilation. Surprisingly, it is not assimilation into white society, as one could expect. In ―Saint Junior‖ the process of assimilation takes place within different tribes. In this case, Grace of Chinese-Mohawk origin has become and identified herself as a Spokane, living so many years on the Spokane reservation with all her family gone. Alexie explains Grace‘s feelings about it as follows: ―[...] she‘d realized she was more Spokane than anything else. She‘d always understood that an Indian could be assimilated and disappear into white culture, but she‘d discovered, too, that an Indian of one tribe could be swallowed whole by another tribe.‖(161)
5.2.2 Basketball as a Means for Self-Esteem and Recognition
Both Roman and Grace are talented. Roman used to be an amazing basketball player. Basketball is a very popular within Native Americans. It is especially important for children and young adults since very often it is the only pass time activity on the reservation. We might understand the importance of the sport to Native Americans better by Alexie‘s explanation of Roman‘s passion for basketball. He says: ―Roman knew that basketball was the most democratic sport. All you needed to play was something that resembled a ball and something else that approximated the shape of a basket.‖(156) 51
Not only you do not need many things to play basketball, but for many Indian it means much more. They can, as well as Roman (and maybe Alexie), prove the strength and masculinity by playing it as if they were contemporary warriors. But for Roman, basketball was also a way how to leave the reservation. Though he loved living there, in his early twenties he felt that he did not belong there, that he was determined for something else. We could recognize there the uncanny feeling, typical for many young adults on their quest for adulthood. In the story Alexie deals with the idea that there are Indians who can live either on the reservation or in the city, Indians who can live in both places, and then those like Roman, who feel that they do not belong anywhere and need to discover the world. The desire to leave home and explore the world is a part of a growing-up process and is experienced by many young adults. Alexie sends Roman to travel the world as a basketball player with Grace accompanying him. While he was playing, she developed her own escape from reality – she started to write poems and stories, and had continued writing since, though she never published her work under her real name until a decade or so later. Roman‘s desire to see the whole world ceased at some point. He and Grace return to the Spokane reservation. The conditions on the reservation can be destructive, as Reservation Blues showed. Neither Roman nor Grace are absorbed by the conditions. Grace as a fourth grade teacher tries to contribute to the welfare of the reservation. This makes Alexie‘s characters more extraordinary.
5.2.3 Conclusion
On the basis of the analysis of what is important for young Indian people living on the reservation is obvious, that in ―Saint Junior‖ it is the game of basketball. The game forms the main storyline and guides the reader through the whole story. Basketball along with his wife became the most important things for Roman.
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I also aimed at the chances of white and Native young adults in terms of education. Grace and Roman had to show more effort to prove that they are good. Alexie referred to the stereotypes still held by white mainstream society and broke them by creating these extraordinary and brave characters. Besides the life of young Indian people, Alexie devoted a lot of space to deal with personal relationships. For Alexie, no matter what ethnicity people are it is a happy relationship/marriage full of love, respect, and tolerance that is important.
5.3 Questioning Identity and Sexuality in the “Toughest Indian in the World”
Next short story to be discussed here is ―The Toughest Indian in the World,‖ a title story from The Toughest Indian in the world (2000). Alexie draws the attention not only to ethnic identity, but also to a sexual one. The search for one‘s sexual identity is an important part of growing up, and sometimes includes experiences of homosexuality. Homosexuality then becomes a crucial issue in the story. I will focus on the main character‘s identity, both ethnic and sexual and how he feels about it. In the story, Alexie develops a portrait of a young Indian journalist. The journalist is influenced by his father‘s opinions on white people. Like his father, he picks up only Indian hitchhikers. One day, he picks up the toughest Indian in the world and this meeting changes the journalist self-perception.
5.3.1 Hope is White
The unnamed character‘s childhood and fathers‘ attitudes towards white people have had an impact on his personality and identity. When he was a boy his father kept warning him about white people. As many Native Americans do, the father blamed white people for the conditions of contemporary Native Americans. He saw evil in the whites as the following excerpt shows: ―They‘ll kill you if they get chance,‖ my father said. ―Love you or hate you, white people will shoot you in the heart. Even after all these years, they‘ll still smell the
53 salmon on you, the dead salmon, and that will make white people dangerous.‖ (21) The salmon, a source of living for the old-time Spokane Indians, stands here for hope. Since the salmon is gone, the hope of Indians is gone as well. The only ones who have hope are white people and so the main protagonist ―know[s] enough to cover [his] heart in any crowd of white people (21).‖ The hopeless atmosphere along with the father‘s drunkenness and two siblings‘ deaths had influenced the psychological development of the hero. Eventually he leaves the reservation. The protagonist‘s father was tough, and so the character thinks it is better to be tough. Because when you have hope, you are vulnerable. Alexie points out to the archetypal image of a warrior that prevails on the reservation and that does not count on vulnerability or emotions. Infected by his father‘s toughness, the young man develops a hatred of white people. He wanted them all to vanish by ignoring them. More precisely, ignoring white hitchhikers on the road and picking up only Indians. It is driving and picking up Indians that become a habit of the main character and at the same time the main storyline. On one hand, the unnamed hero hates white people. On the other hand, he celebrates white singers and musicians. The character is therefore caught between white and non-white worlds.
5.3.2 Tough Homosexuality
In the story Alexie involves the themes of minority and outsiderness. The hero is the only Indian journalist in a local newspaper and is looked down on by his colleagues. He is given work nobody else wants to do. Unlike in Reservation Blues and ―Saint Junior,‖ in ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖ the main protagonist is an urban Indian. He has cut himself off the Spokane reservation deliberately. He does not seem to be sure why he had distanced himself from the reservation. On the contrary, he wants to have connections with Indians. The fact that he picks up only Indian hitchhikers can be the proof.
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When encountering an Indian hitchhiker he pretends to be a traditional Indian coming from the reservation using the reservation colloquiality ―ennit.‖(26) However, the main topic of the story is the search for gender identity, in this case homosexuality, which is here connected to that of being an Indian. Marginally, the author refers to the fact that many white women find partners of exotic origin, Indians included, to have them like trophies. The sensitive hero picks up an Indian hitchhiker on one of his work travels. The hitchhiker is older and tough. He is a fighter in illegal Indian fights. The fighter is the prototype of the old-time Indian warrior. He is rough, has long, black hair, and broken crooked nose (26). The hero looks up to the hitchhiker and admires him for his strength and Indianness. Later he is even physically attracted to him. He can be attracted to him because of the fact that he lost the contact with the tribe and reservation and the fighter reminds him of it. Out of good will he offers him to stay over the night in a motel room with him. During the night this tough, and probably the toughest Indian fighter approaches him and they have sex. Even though the hero denies being a gay before the intercourse, he lets the fighter do it. He had a white girlfriend before, but it was the kind of girl who dated men of different ethnicity to have them as trophies. After the sexual intercourse, the main protagonist feels confused. Nonetheless, the experience helped the protagonist to feel stronger then. He felt like a warrior with hope as the final line suggests: ―At that moment, if you had broken open my heart you could have looked inside and seen the white thin skeletons of one thousand salmon.‖ (34)
5.3.3 Conclusion
The short story observes that it is our parents who have a big impact on making their children‘s identity. The character evolved hatred of white people and lost hope, because his father hated white people and lost hope. At the same time, the character lives in a white world and feels disconnected from his ethnic
55 heritage. So he strives for a kind of reconnection. Some of Alexie‘s characters, and probably real Native Americans, decide to live in the white world, in spite of the hatred they have for white people. When they meet other Indians they pretend to be very traditional as if they were ashamed they are not really that traditional. It is the fate of some of them to be torn between white and Native worlds, not knowing where to belong. Alexie is an advocate of homosexuality and claims that homosexuality is ―an alternative to male-dominated heterosexuality, suggesting that homosexuals are ultimately morally superior to most heterosexuals [who are] more aggressive, violent, and destructive.―108 When the hero finds homosexual orientation in an archetype of a male and warrior Indianness, he realizes that the archetype is not true or real. It is in fact only an image created by mainstream society and its media. It is not only Indian identity, but also human and sexual relations on which Alexie focused in the short story.
5.4 Search for Identity in “The Search Engine”
The third short story I chose for the thesis is ―The Search Engine‖ from the collection of Ten Little Indians (2002). The title alludes to a nursery rhyme and its various versions in which Indians are depicted as silly and dying of silly causes.109 Alexie breaks the stereotypical views suggested in the nursery rhyme by creating new contemporary Native American characters. According to Porter, approximately two thirds of Native Americans live in cities110. The collection is different from the previous work of Alexie in that he focuses on urban Indians. The main protagonist of ―The Search Engine‖ lives in a city. The main themes of the story are being an outsider (or the other) and the search for identity. The themes, though from different perspectives, are
108 Alexie quoted in Grassian, D. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, p. 158 109 ―Ten Little Indians.‖ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 August 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Little_Indians, last updated 22 October 2010 110 Porter, J. ―Historical and cultural contexts to Native American literature.‖ The Cambridge Guide to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter. Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 60 56 developed through two main protagonists, an Indian teenaged college student Corliss and an aging Indian poet Harlan Atwater. I will try to focus on constituting the main characters identities.
5.4.1 Overcoming Family Life Conceptions
Corliss wants her blue-collar family to recognize the importance of poetry that she loves. Her family hate white people in general. She cannot succeed without finding an Indian author because her family would despise white poetry. She finds a poetry book by an unknown Spokane Indian and decides to find him. Corliss in the pursuit of a better life extricates from the life on Spokane reservation and from her poor family by attending a non-reservation public college, Washington State University. She could not have managed to attend such a school, if it were not for her extraordinary personality and the endeavour she put into it. In the previous chapters, I claimed that the reservation depicted by Alexie is usually male dominated. In this story, however, the character (and Alexie) has a different point of view, which acknowledges that the warrior-like behaviour and archetype is only a fake. Corliss despises the matriarchal system in which she was raised up. All her family, especially the male members, gave up. ―What kind of warriors were these Indian men? [...] were Crazy Horse and Geronimo supportive of their wives? Did Sitting Bull chat with his wife?‖ (15) The men on the reservation are supported by their wives who earn more money, and they are satisfied with the things being this way. They do not strive for better lives. They just do what they were told by the white teachers, white-collars, or counsellors. This has alienated Corliss from her kinsmen. Nevertheless, even if an outsider for leaving the reservation, she is given a lot of support not only from her family, but also from the tribe. They want her to return to the reservation as an educated woman and take care of them.
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5.4.2 Ambivalent Identity in White Society
In almost all Alexie‘s stories I chose, the main protagonists are confronted with the physical appearance of the white people they meet. As suggested by Šárka Bubíková (2008), body and physical appearance become signifiers of identity which is a typical topic discussed on ethnic bildungromans. In the eyes of Alexie‘s characters, white people are viewed with awe, like if they were some kind of supernatural creatures. Alexie uses very similar descriptions of white people and puts them into his characters‘ mouths. Junior, the hero of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007) reacts on his white classmates when he gets to his white class for the first time like this: ―[…] the kids are not white, they‘re translucent. You could see the blue veins running through their skin like rivers.‖(55) Very often are the white counterparts blond, blue-eyed and skinny. The characters are thus exposed to an all-white environment making them the minority. Corliss is alienated not only from her family, but feels alienated at the college, too. Furthermore, she is confused with defining of who she is. She does not want to stick to other Indians for what they are like, for their poverty, tribalism, and their fear of being alone. Neither she wants to share a flat with white people, because they are too romantic about Native Americans. They have too stereotypical images about Native Americans and make them the others. In spite of that she lets her white classmates to treat her for coffee. Alexie justifies her: ―For five centuries, Indians were slaughtered because they were Indians, co if Corliss received a free coffee now and again from the local free- range lesbian Indiophile, who could possibly find the wrong in that?‖(174) On the other hand, Corliss is afraid of the possibility that the whites could find out that she is an ordinary girl. What we can observe here is that she is lost in defining her identity. Alexie sets Corliss on her vision quest to find out who she is. In this context Alexie refers to Indian-white relationships in terms of the significance Indians are admitted by whites. She can feel she belongs to a minority. How could she feel confident being Indian when ―during the hour and a half [of 58
American History classes] they covered five hundred years of Indian history.‖ (34)
5.4.3 Obsession with Authenticity
Corliss is special not only for leaving the reservation but also for her passion for books, more precisely for poetry. She escapes from reality through poetry. Alexie introduces his second protagonist, by letting Corliss find a book of an unknown Spokane poet Harlan Atwater. He is another type of outsider. He is an urban Indian of Spokane origin raised in a city by white parents. He is a so called ―lost bird‖ to other reservation Indians. (40) Corliss sets out to find Harlan Atwater. Because he is a Spokane Indian, as she wrongly suppose, she thinks her family could start to take poetry seriously. Especially the male members of her family despise white people and do not approve of Corliss‘ passion for white poetry. If she proved that also Indians write poetry, she could stop hiding her books and her family would stop to look down on her for reading them. By discovering Harlan she could turn them to more distinguished activities, and change their opinions on poetry. When she finds him in Seattle, Harlan tells her about his poet career in a flashback. When young, Harlan Atwater started to write poetry about Indians. He pretended to be an authentic, real Indian who draws from his personal experiences. Through this character Alexie presents the paradox he opposes. There is too much literature on reservation life by authors who have actually never lived on any.111 The character of Harlan is a very good example of Alexie‘s approach. In times when Harlan was famous for his poetry, he was invented to a radio interview. In the interview Alexie lets him say: ―There‘s been so much junk written about Indians, you know? So much romanticism and stereotyping. I‘m just trying to be authentic, you know?‖(22) On the character of Harlan, Alexie further develops an idea that Indians are easy to fake. Even real Indians believed that Harlan is one of them. He
111 Purdy, J. ―Crossroads: a Conversation with Sherman Alexie.‖ 4 October 1997. 20 August 2010.
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5.4.4 Conclusion
By the character of Corliss, Alexie showed how young Native people feel about their ethnicity. As well as the unnamed hero of ―The Toughest Indian in the World,‖ Corliss is torn between the worlds she lives in. She has ambiguous feelings about being Indian. What Alexie suggests is that young Indian people should free themselves from opinions and views held by their parents and by white mainstream society. This means that they should be strong and not afraid to strive for better lives even outside the reservation. On the character of Harlan Atwater, Alexie presented what values he appreciates the most. On the example of Harlan‘s white parents, the story shows that it is loving and stable family and good human relationships in general which are more important to Alexie than the issues of ethnicity.
5.5 Growing Up on the Street and Doubling of Identities in Flight
After a ten-years long pause, Alexie published another novel in 2007, the novel Flight. Earlier the same year he published The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Both of them are aimed at young adult readers, and both will be discussed in the thesis. First, I will have a look at the young adult novel Flight. Alexie tells a story about a teenaged Indian mix-blooded orphan. The boy changes foster homes for juvenile prison on regular bases. One day he meets a white boy and this encounter sets the main protagonist on a time travel through history. I will concentrate on the life of an Indian mix-blooded young adult living in a city. I will look at the issues of identity and aspects that influence its forming.
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5.5.1 Lost Indian Childhood
Through the main protagonist Zits, a fifteen year-old mix-blooded Irish- Indian boy, Alexie shows another pattern of growing up. As we could see, most of Alexie‘s heroes discussed in the thesis do not have parents. Zits is no exception. He is an orphan and he cannot receive love and support from his family. He is placed into different foster families but in none he feels comfortable or safe. Alexie engages the image of a postmodern young adult as suggested by Petr Chalupský.112 According to him, children carry the burden of adult world and cannot enjoy their childhoods. He lost trust in people when his mother died and thanks to the fact that he never knew his father. He had experienced sexual abuse from a family member and had been persuaded that he was an unlovable liar: ―Don‘t tell anybody. […]Everybody knows you‘re a liar. […]Nobody loves you anymore. […]I learned how to stop crying. I learned how to hide inside myself. I learned how to be somebody else. I learned how to be cold and numb.‖ (160-161) However, Zits is partly responsible for the changing of families. He is fractious and refuses to be helped by the families. Most of the foster families are Indian families who are either good but poor and squalid, or who adopt children only to get state benefits or to abuse them. Once he admits that some white fathers were better than Indian ones. Here, Alexie subordinates ethnicity to good human relationship. Adolescents pay lots of attention to their outer shells. Zits, a fifteen-year old, associates formation of his identity with his physical appearance. He has a bad complexion, considers himself ugly and he is an Indian. Moreover, young adults suffer from both inner and outer changes. Alexie lets the reader look into a messy self of a teenager: ―I‘m dying from about ninety-nine kinds of shame. I‘m ashamed of being fifteen years old. And being tall. And skinny. And ugly.
112 Chalupský, Petr. ―Freedom, Spontainety, Imagination and the Loss of Innocence – the Theme of Childhood in Ian McEwan´s Fiction.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008,p.55 62
I‘m ashamed that I look like a bag of zits tied to a broomstick. I wonder if loneliness causes acne. I wonder if being Indian causes acne.‖(4) The characters of Alexie‘s previous stories looked at white people and their whiteness with awe. They felt inferior to them. When Zits is in juvenile jail, he meets a white boy there. Zits is fascinated by the boy‘s whiteness, which Alexie expresses through Zits‘ voice as follows: ―[...] his complexion is nearly translucent, you can see the veins running through his skin like rivers.‖(22) This is a description Alexie already used in his previous stories.
5.5.2 Television, the Only Friend
Alexie‘s characters I have dealt with have their own ways of escaping the reality. What storytelling is for Thomas, basketball for Roman, and reading poetry for Corliss, is watching TV and reading books for Zits. Bubíková says that many postmodern teenagers get lonely and isolated because they spend most of their leisure time in front of TV and computer.113 The same could be said about Zits – he gets lonely. Zits loves watching TV and learns everything about Indians from television. By this Alexie may allude to the misperception and misinterpretation of Native Americans by the medium of television. There is no other way for Zits how to learn about Indians and their life except for books and television. He has lived in some Indian foster families but the time he spends there is not enough to learn about the Native life. As some scholars claimed children were taken away their childhood in the postmodern era. The same happened to Zits. He cannot enjoy his childhood since he is very lonely and alcohol and criminality became a solution to his deprivation. Thacker further says that young people outside of the nuclear family are uncontrollable force and that heavy with adult issues they can even commit a murder.114 Zits knows only homeless Indians who he claims can
113 Bubíková, Šárka. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009, p.67 114 114 Thacker, Deborah. „Playful Subversion.“ Introducing children´s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 140 63 outdrink: ―I don‘t know any other Native Americans, except the homeless Indians who wander around downtown Seattle. [...] Of course, those wandering Indians are not the only Indians in the world, but they‘re the only ones who pay attention to me.‖(7) Zits is lonely. To get attention, he shoplifts and commits misdemeanour. The only person on which Zits can rely is a white officer Dave. The officer presents the respectful authority that has been absent in all Zits life. Dave is the only one who still trusts Zits. Nobody else cares about a poor Indian boy. Alexie sets Zits out on his identity quest through time when he starts shooting people in a bank and is shot himself by a security guard. Here, we can follow Thacker‘s (2002) assumption about children as possible murderers. Beach and Marshall add that juvenile delinquency is caused by the stresses of young adults which may arise from the confusing aspects of growing up (for instance confusing roles acted out by parents).115 Zits wants to shoot the people, because he wants revenge. Alexie refers to Indian myths and history. The shooting is meant to be Zits‘s conception of the mythical Ghost Dance. He wants all white people to disappear and his parents to return. The hero of ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖ held a milder way to let white people vanish – ignorance. In Flight, we can feel more violence. Here in the bank the fantasy begins.
5.2.3 Fantastical Search for Identity
Every time Zits closes his eyes, he wakes up in a different body, in a different historical setting, he flights through time. This might be where the title comes from. All bodies Zits finds himself in are his doubles. He is confronted with them, which helps him to search for his identity. Alexie plays on the different characters from the past and provides the reader with information about historical background and the relationships between Native Americans and
115 Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1991, p. 338 64 non-natives. He comes up with his own interpretation of history. He expresses his revisionist attitudes toward history. The story of Zits differs from those discussed especially in the genre, for it contains elements of fantasy. To find his identity, Alexie sends Zits on a time travel to history. Young adult readers like fantasy and imagination, as for instance Pokřivčáková116 says. Young adult readers could be attracted to the novel thanks to the fantasy elements. Lewis claims that postmodern authors reach historiographic metafiction by blurring history and fantasy117 and Alexie fits the mold. In other words, real historical figures appear in the story, such as Horse and Elk, the members of IRON (Indigenous Rights Now), Crazy Horse, or Sitting Bull. Moreover, the author also uses the means of temporal distortion. He corrupts the presence by the hero‘s travels into the past. The first double of Zits is a white FBI agent Hank. Zits finds himself in Idaho back in the 1970s. At first he is confused, but soon he finds out that his badge of ugliness – his acne – disappeared. He feels confident until he finds out that he alias Hank and his white partner are going to meet two historical Indian figures, Elk and Horse from IRON. These Indians are considered contemporary heroes as Zits learnt from television. According to Alexie‘s interpretation they are traitors to their indigenous organization. He refers to the misinterpretation by media and consequent acceptance of it in society. By Hank‘s partner‘s reflection on Indians, Alexie offers the opposite of the image of a noble savage, still based on prejudices: ―Well, maybe some of the kids are still okay. But they‘re going bad, too. Just you watch. There‘s something bad inside these Indians. They can‘t help themselves.‖(45) On his identity quest Zits wants to feel powerful. A kind of development can be observed when we focus on the ways Zits feels powerful. It was the guns that made him powerful in the bank. Now, it is the love of his wife and kids
116 Pokrivčáková, Silvia. ―Children´s Literature and Its Study.‖ Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003, p. 9 117 Lewis, B. ―Word Salad Days: Postmodernism and Literature, 1960-1990‖. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001p. 127 65 who he as Hank has. But right when Zits have the feeling of power derived from his wife‘s kisses: ―God, I think I would kill for her kisses,‖ (58) he closes his eyes and wakes up in a different body, in a different place. Zits happens to be in a huge tepee in an Indian camp. The description of the camp is based only on what he knows from the television which leads the reader to a question how truthful the depiction might be. Alexie points out to the preservation of culture and traditions, in contrast with the tendency of assimilation. Zits in the body of a twelve year-old full-blood Indian boy questions his mixed-blood origin as something inferior: ―These old-time Indians have dark skin. There aren‘t any half-breed pale beige green-eyed Indians here. Nope, unlike me, these Indians are the real deal.‖(60) Alexie deals with the position of mix-blood Native Americans. Zits, an orphan, does not know what it means to be an Indian nor what it means to be an Irish. He is very confused by his identity. He finds out that the little Indian boy, the body of which he occupies, has a father and the boy becomes Zits second double. The boy has a father and so does Zits. He has a real family for the first time and this makes him powerful again. He wants to talk to his father but is unable to speak, which might be perceived as a part of the time-travelling trial on which he has been sent. It seems like the hero is determined to suffer from impairments, e.g. the acne he has as Zits. The impairments could be observed as a manifestation of being Indian, like a badge of ethnicity, or maybe as a punishment for all his previous misdemeanour. The idea of being in heaven is dismissed once Zits learns he is in a Sioux camp at Little Bighorn in 1876. Alexie provides the reader with Zits‘ view on the battle, based on his television knowledge. Zits killed in the bank and as Hank. Alexie refers to violence in general. He also describes what happened to the dead white soldiers after the battle. They were mutilated and violated. Alexie suggests that violence is always present on both sides, that it is universal. The little boy‘s father wants his son, and so Zits, to kill a young white soldier as a revenge for his disability to speak. Zits remembers a foster father
66 that used to abuse him, and the desire for revenge grows. Then he contemplates on the idea of who is responsible for the abuse. It is not other people‘s fault. The progress in the development of the hero is seen in his attitude towards violence as a means of revenge. Zits escapes the situation by closing eyes again. Zits happens to inhabit the body of an old U.S. cavalry Indian tracker named Gus. He is a kind of disabled, too. This time he suffers from arthritis and whole body pain. He has to lead his division to an Indian camp to slaughter Indians of the place because they killed some white settlers recently. The author presents the ambiguity of war again. War does not distinguish the races or ethnics. Both sides suffer the same. It can be perceived as a punishment for what Zits has done in the bank. Alexie exposes Gus/Zits to something Zits has not experienced yet. There is a character of a young white soldier who refuses to participate in the slaughtering and saves a little Indian boy from being killed. We can observe Alexie‘s attitude of treating Native and white people equally. He does not say that all white people are bad. He proves it on the example of this young soldier. Zits defeats Gus‘s mind and helps the soldier, even if he knows he will be punished for treason. Zits identify himself with the saved little Indian boy. Zits also used to stick to anyone who offered him even a tiny piece of love. He sacrifices himself to save the boys. In the very impasse he escapes by closing his eyes. By Zits‘ next double, Alexie turns to the theme of betrayal, though from a different perspective. Alexie refers to a historical milestone not only for the U.S.A., but also for the whole world. The milestone is the 9/11. Zits appears to be a white, blond, blue-eyed pilot Jimmy, who was betrayed by his best friend Abbad. After Jimmy teaches Abbad to fly a plane, he commits a terrorist attack and kills himself, his family and the passengers. Zits becomes Jimmy. Zits too has trusted so many people and has been betrayed many times as well. Depressed by Abbad‘s deed and cheating on his wife, Jimmy decides to kill himself by crashing a plane.
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One of the characteristics of young adult novel is that it is told from a teenager‘s point of view. Flight fits this characteristic. The protagonist keeps his teenager‘s view even if he inhabits bodies of adults. ―I miss my mother,‖ he says as he pilots a small plane as Jimmy. ―I miss her all the time. I want to see her again. And now here I am in the body of a pilot as he flies. It makes sense. The last time my mother was happy she was on an airplane. So maybe this is my last place to be happy.‖(109) Alexie reserved the last reincarnation for the character of Zits‘ father, which actually helps Zits to understand himself better. By the character of his father, Alexie naturalistically portrays the life of contemporary alcoholic Native Americans living on the streets in urban areas. They are sick, eat expired food, and blame the others, especially white people for their condition. Zits shares his father‘s memories on his father‘s childhood. Zits‘ grandfather was despotic and a drunk. He humiliated and did not respect Zit‘s father, as the following excerpt shows: ―I want you to know, what I know. You ain‘t worth shit now. And you ain‘t ever gonna be worth shit.‖(155) Having had such a horrible childhood, Zits‘ father decided not participate in the parenthood for fear of treating Zits in the same way as his father did. The consequences of family relationships are apparent. Is it better to be a bad father or no father? When Zits opens his eyes, he is in the bank again. He realizes he did not shoot anybody. He is relieved. He sees a little blond blue-eyed boy with his mom. The boy is loved. Alexie suggests that the colour of the skin is an important factor, as Zits associates it with the possibility to be loved. All the violence, treason and vengeance he experienced on his travels make him a better person now. With the humour that Alexie confers to him, Zits says: ―I mean, jeez, I‘m a fifteen-year-old foster kid with a history of fire setting, time travelling, body shifting, and mass-murder contemplation. I think I might be unlovable.‖(173)
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The only person Zits can rely on and trust is Officer Dave. He cares about Zits too, and becomes a father Zits never had. Dave helps him find a new foster family, white family – his brother and his wife.
5.5.4 Conclusion
In the young adult fantasy novel, Alexie discussed the position of mix- blooded Native Americans. They are in a worse position that full-blooded individuals. Not only are they torn between white and native worlds, but also they are torn between the different ethnic heritages of their parents. Alexie‘s protagonist (and perhaps Alexie) feels it as something inferior. The character of Zits develops from an Indian boy striving to follow the Indian culture and tradition to a boy happily settled with a white family. He coped with reality by violence. This approached changed and he gains power through such values as love, trust, and family. We can conclude that young adults are vulnerable people who need to be loved. In other case, they identity will be damaged, no matter what ethnicity they are. As Alexie did in his previous works, he does not blame the whites for all that happen to Indians. Furthermore, he shifts ethnicity behind good human relationships based on trust and love. Alexie suggests that it is an important step for both sides to improve the Indian-White relationships. American Indians should not blame only the white people for their conditions. White people should acknowledge their past deeds and pity them.
5.6 Outsiderness and Betrayal in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian The subject of this chapter is the second young adult novel Alexie published in 2007. The hero Arnold Spirit alias Junior is a fourteen year-old boy who grows up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Through the voice of Junior we learn a lot about Alexie‘s growing-up by the use of humour, irony and hyperbole.
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Junior leaves the reservation school for a white high school outside the reservation which changes his life immensely. In this chapter I will try to follow themes of Indian identity, outsiderness, and the conditions determining lives of young people on the reservations. In contrast to the previously discussed novels and short stories, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian carries more characteristics of young adult fiction. First characteristic is the layout of the novel. The chapters are fragmented by illustrations by Ellen Forney, a professional cartoonist and illustrator; secondly, the font size is bigger. Both are aspects appealing to young adult readers because they are highly sensory dependent. Next, the novel is written in the form of a diary that is attractive for young adult readers who like to read authentic stories. In a conversation with an adult, Junior is confused by the man‘s mysterious smile, and responds to it in this manner: ―Do they go to college for that?‖(34) The authenticity of the novel can is seen in the hero‘s vision of the adult world or adults themselves, and show evidence of the author‘s knowledge of the period childhood/adolescence. As we will see in the following text, Alexie returns to his topics and themes. Whether it is the status of outsiders in Reservation Blues, importance of basketball and white prejudices in ―Saint Junior,‖ a loss of hope and homosexuality in ―The Toughest Indian in the World,‖ quest for identity in ―The Search Engine,‖ or growing up in contemporary mainstream America in Flight, we can find all these themes in the The Absolutely True Diary118.
118 The novel was given a special flavour of forbidden fruits by its ban at Stockton High School, Missouri. The ban was suggested by some of the members of the school board. They argued that the novel involves vulgarity in ―topics such as masturbation, racism and violence, among others.― The article is available at
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5.6.1 Family Background and Friends
We learn that physical appearance, so important for young adults, does not help Junior much to cope with the difficulties of this period. Not only suffers he from brain damage that leads to a skull deformation, but he also stutters and lisps which at the age of fourteen makes him ―the biggest retard‖(4). Being a retard he often gets beat up by other kids on the reservation. He therefore resorts to home, because he feels safe there. Each of the Alexie‘s heroes is somehow special and Junior is not an exception. He evolved affection for drawing cartoons and reading. These became a certain escape from the everyday. He feels important when drawing because he can be who he wants to be or maybe who he does not want to be. He does not want to be a poor Indian boy. Growing-up on the reservation where everybody is poor and always has been, ―you start believing you are poor, because you deserve it somehow, that you are poor because you are stupid and ugly and that you are stupid and ugly because you are Indian.‖(13) Here, the Alexie‘s hero displays a black and white explanation of life reality, so typical for young adults. The only friend Junior has on the reservation is Rowdy, a counterpart of him who protects him and who becomes even more important to him than his loving family. Here, we can see the change of the child-family relationship that emerged in the postmodern era when more importance began to be assigned to peers. Rowdy, as his name suggests is hot-tempered, strong, and do not think twice to use fists. What puts them together apart from their friendship is that their parents drink. Alcoholism is omnipresent at the reservation and has an immense impact on the personalities of growing up children. Rowdy‘s father is a heavy drinker and beats his son frequently. Rowdy protects himself by being very tough and by transferring his emotions to his environment through beating everything up.
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Though Junior‘s parents do not beat him, he suffers from their alcoholism, too. However, at the same time his parents are for him, in Alexie‘s words, “[his] twin suns around which [he] orbit[s] (11).‖ The family and community are highly valued within Native Americans. In the novel, the important role of the Indian family is apparent as well as the traditional respect to the elders, in this case to Junior‘s wise and traditional grandmother. Her wisdom also reflects in the perception of a gay community. Through the character of the grandmother, Alexie expresses his known affirmative attitudes towards the minority. Furthermore, he suggests that Indians used to be very tolerant until the arrival of Christianity. However, he does not side with natives or non-natives, as the following statement shows: ―Indians can be just as judgmental and hateful as any white person.‖ (155)
5.6.2 Status of Outsider for Pursuing Better Life
Junior is not extraordinary only for his drawing skills. He is extraordinary also for his zeal to have better life. Alexie breaks the stereotypical views on Indians as submissive and silent. Junior is different. He wants his dream to come true and better life than his family had. Alexie makes his character strong and extraordinary by letting him leave the reservation Wellpinit High School for an all-white Reardan High School. The impetus for Alexie‘s Junior to leave the reservation can be perceived as a kind of an atonement of the white people for the treatment of Native Americans. This is embodied in the character of Junior‘s Wellpinit teacher who literally forces Junior to leave and get better life, being the smartest kid on the reservation. We can observe Alexie‘s revisionist attitude towards history. In this case, attitudes towards the practices of assimilation applied to education, when the teachers tried to kill ―the Indianness‖119 in American Indians. The teacher confesses from the attitudes he assumed towards Native American children he taught in the past. The common approach was to kill the Indian spirit, to
119 Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p.1 72 socialize them and make them Americans. Here is what Alexie says in the words of Junior‘s teacher:
―When I first started teaching here, that‘s what we did to the rowdy ones, you know? We beat them. That‘s how we were taught to teach you. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child. … We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren‘t trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture.‖ (35)
The confession meant a simple thing for Junior. If he stayed at the reservation school, he would give up as his parents and sister did. They gave up in the sense of a loss of their faith in their dreams and it is what Arnold was raised up in, that Indians do not get realize their dreams (12). Junior has to make the most important decision of his life. The decision is determined by his parents‘ answer to his question of who has the most hope. Not surprisingly, the parents‘ answer is: ―White people do‖ (44). In his work, Alexie devotes a large space for Native and non-Native relationships. In The Absolutely True Diary, he develops a relationships based on superiority and inferiority. What Junior is going to experience now is the status of outsider. Even if he actually did not leave the reservation in the sense of moving out, the tribe considers him a betrayer. The same happen to Alexie‘s heroes in Reservation Blues. Although they did not leave the reservation, but only went out to play their music a couple of times, they were regarded betrayers. Many Native Americans have to cope with this unpleasant situation when they decide to ―leave.‖ They betray their tribes by leaving in a pursuit of better life, which is by many of the members of the tribe thought of as the pursuit of a white life, which makes them white as well then. Alexie tries to change that opinion. For he himself left a reservation school for a white one, which makes The Absolutely True Diary highly autobiographical.
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At the white school, Junior experiences alienation, loneliness, ignorance, and racism. When he confronted racism, Alexie put the very common insults which Native Americans are stereotypically addressed by such as chief, tonto, red-skin, warrior, or squaw boy into the white insulters‘ mouths. Naomi Caldwell, the President of American Indian Library Association (AILA) and Lisa Mitten, AILA Secretary, provide in their handout on books about Native Americans a list of stereotypes occurring in these books.120 They list demeaning vocabulary, including those mentioned above. Alexie uses ―warrior‖ in a positive way, though. When Junior goes to the white school for the first time, his father tells him: ―This is a great thing,‖ he said. ―You‘re so brave. You‘re a warrior‖(55). Junior likes this address. After a serious insult Junior decided to fight back, with a fist. Nobody expected that from a peaceful and submissive Indian boy, again an example of Alexie‘s breaking up the stereotypes. However, it was the first time he coped with a confrontation by the use of a physical violence. A kind of development of the character can be seen in that he gradually becomes less depended on his best friend Rowdy. The above mentioned feelings of alienation or loneliness can be describe as the uncanny121, i.e. feelings we already discussed and traced in other Alexie‘s stories.
5.6.3 Red Outside, White Inside
Facing hatred on the reservation and ignorance and alienation at the white school, Junior‘s identity is strongly questioned. He feels like he does not belong to any community, neither to the Indian nor to the white one. The following excerpt shows his feelings as well as the origin of the title:
120 Caldwell, Naomi et al. ―‖I‖ Is Not For Indian: The Portrayal of Native Americans in Books For Young People‖ American Indian Library Association. Oct. 2007. 10 Nov 2009.
―Travelling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn‘t pay well at all.‖ (118)
This contradictory situation led people on the reservation to call him an apple – red outside but white inside (132). Poverty, being one of the biggest problems on the reservation, determines Junior‘s life. However romanticized topic it can be for some122, Alexie‘s hero does not think there is anything romantic about poverty. When going trick-or-treating on Halloween as a homeless man, he does not have to wear any fancy dress. He just wears his usual clothes. Money is also an important factor in establishing his position among his white peers and in his realizing the difference between being white and Indian. White children have plenty of money, plenty of everything. What they do not have, however, is the caring family. Even if drunks, Junior‘s parents do care about him, which is a thing that many of his white peers miss.
5.6.4 Getting Even with Basketball
Junior‘s best friend Rowdy also feels betrayed by Junior for leaving him on the reservation. Though they sometimes meet on the reservation, the most important meetings are during basketball school matches, each playing for different teams. Rowdy plays for the reservation high school, Junior for the white Reardan team. As we could see in ―Saint Junior‖, basketball is an important leisure activity for children and young adults on the reservation. The game is also an important, and sometimes the only means given by the mainstream culture for getting the self-esteem: ―It makes me feel like I‘ve grown up really
122 ―Readers Guide to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.‖ Fallsapart. 2 April 2009
75 fast and I‘ve come to realize that every moment of my life is important.‖ (184) In other words, Indians do not have many opportunities to fulfil themselves, and it is just basketball that is very important in lives of the children on the reservation. Hence, basketball became the means of getting even between the boys. Playing on the reservation, Junior, the outsider, did not have much audience. This is how he felt, by Alexie‘s words full of humour and irony:
―Jeez, I felt like one of those Indian scouts who led the U.S. Cavalry against other Indians.‖ (183) This excerpt shows one of many Alexie‘s references to history. His description of history throughout the novel makes the white reader realize the deeds of the white man. As David Moore explains: ―Through anger and imagination, intimacy, and irony, Alexie reshapes the reader‘s ability to face themselves, America, and American Indians.‖123 Junior‘s team won, but his goodness and empathy do not allow him to enjoy it. He realizes the difference between the white and Native children – all the white boys have eaten, are going to college and cannot live with drunken parents. As I mentioned above, alcoholism is omnipresent and does not avoid Junior‘s family either. According to the AA for Native North America, Native Americans start to drink because they are torn between native and mainstream cultures. They continue saying that most deaths of Native Americans are caused by alcohol.124 Junior sister dies when drunk unconscious, his grandmother is killed by a drunk driver, and his father‘s best friend is shot by his drunken friend. Junior takes this as a punishment for his leaving the reservation, a theme that Alexie develops in his novel Flight, too. To attract their readers, young adult novels have to deal with problems young adults can identify with. The Absolutely True Diary does exactly so. Alexie does not avoid themes that might be considered controversial, and in the voice of Junior speaks openly for example about masturbation. Junior assumes that
123 Moore, David. ―Sherman Alexie: irony, intimacy, and agency.‖ The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter and Kenneth M. Roemer. Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 301. 124 AA for the Native North American: Trails of Freedom. 1989. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1989. 12 Dec 2009.
5.6.5 Conclusion
The novel offers topics which might be familiar to many young adult readers. There is the young adult hero suffering from teenage problems such as funny look. He views the world by teenage eyes and copes with the reality with irony and humour. Young adult readers can identify with the hero even at the very beginning of the novel and find the affection not only for the hero, but also for the book. Alexie shows us that we can be whoever we want and have whatever we want, no matter ethnicity or social class. He encourages young people who feel uncomfortable or stifled on the reservation to pursuit better life outside the reservation. He suggests that the young people have to be extraordinarily strong because they might cope with the hatred of their people, racism of white people, and uncanny feelings caused by their position of outsiders. All the issues are dealt with in the novel. I find it absurd that some educated people had it banned from teaching at a high school. For it can help many young adults get through the difficult period of growing up, and actually bring them to reading.
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Conclusion
In the thesis I attempted to explore the identity of contemporary Native American young adults on the basis of analysis of selected novels and short stories by Sherman Alexie. I focused on selected aspects which affect the Native American identity. The aspects are family background, reservation conditions, sports, and stereotypes held by mainstream American society especially concerning the views on Native Americans as a minority group. From the analysis I tried to observe whether and how Alexie‘s writing and his characters developed and conclude the possibilities of contemporary Native American young people in terms of assertion in the society. One cannot assert oneself without forming the identity. Native American young people have to overcome many obstacles while forming their Native American identities. They have to overcome the way of thinking of older generations, they have to be strong enough to leave the reservation and to face hatred when they come back, they have to cope with their mix-blooded origins and accept a part of the responsibility for Native American conditions. The year of publication of the works I selected ranges from 1995 to 2007. A certain development can be observed in Alexie‘s writing and his characters. In Reservation Blues (1995), he concerned mainly on the issues of ethnicity, and explored the reservation life. With the short stories from later collections ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖ and ―Saint Junior‖ (2000), and ―The Search Engine‖ (2003), he focuses his attention also to other issues than identity. He explores themes of sexual identity, family relations, male dominated society, and social isolation. In Flight (2007), along with ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖ and ―The Search Engine,‖ Alexie moves beyond the reservation borders and deals with Native Americans living in urban areas. He goes back to the reservation issues in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007). There is a five-year gap between the first novel and the short story collection where ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖ and ―Saint Junior‖ come from. Alexie
78 gradually shifted the importance of good human relationships based on love, trust, and tolerance in front of ethnicity issues. Mostly, the novels and short stories I chose for the analysis meet the characteristics of young adult literature such as elements of fantasy and imagination, contemporary language based on young adult speech, and themes such as search for identity. In his work, Alexie depicted a lonely and isolated postmodern young adult and followed the characteristics of postmodern American bildungsroman as suggested by a professor of English and American literature Šárka Bubíková. Not all of the novels and short stories are uniquely young adult novels. In such stories, Alexie refers to the characters childhood and growing-up in a large extent and elements of the postmodern American bildungsroman can be observed there. Some of Alexie´s characters also fit the assumptions about postmodern youth defined by Dr Deborah Thacker, especially in terms of juvenile delinquency caused by the lost of childhood. In contrast to juvenile novels from 1940s and 50s and early 60s, Alexie along with other contemporary writers for young adults writes about things as they are and does not avoid taboo themes such as alcoholism, family conflicts, violence, suicide, or sexual issues. Alexie´s novels and short stories bear in varying degrees autobiographical elements. He gives a depiction of the position of contemporary young adult Native Americans and he suggests possible ways of getting better life. Through his work, we can learn a lot about their lives and use this information not only for our knowledge enrichment but also in the school classrooms. Alexie´s characters, both living on the reservation and in urban environments, are to a large extent affected by the conditions they live in. It is not easy to grow up on the reservation where people are surrounded by unemployment, poverty, hunger, and alcoholism. Some of the characters lost their parents. Those characters who have their parents very often do not get along with them for their opinions and worldviews. The young heroes are strong then to take care of themselves.
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The reservation environment depicted by Alexie is gloomy and many young adults may not feel comfortable there. There are not many opportunities for them how to spend their leisure time. Alexie ascribes a huge importance to the game of basketball. Through this low-cost game, young adults can prove their skills and their self-esteem is recognized. They can hardly achieve this in any other reservation activity. What I observed in the novels and short stories is Alexie´s appeal to young Native Americans to try and pursue happiness and better life outside the reservation, in case they are unhappy on their reservations. If they decide to follow Alexie´s steps and do leave the reservation they have to face an assigned status of outsiders. The members of the tribe from older generations still perceive white people as evil, and blame them for the current state of Native American conditions. They consequently perceive the decision of the young members to leave as a betrayal to the tribe. At the same time, many of these young Native Americans are misunderstood in the white mainstream society influenced by stereotypes and prejudices. In his works, Alexie tries to deconstruct the stereotypes. One could suggest that Alexie, too, writes stereotypically about Native Americans. He writes about social issues, such as poverty and alcoholism. This is not a stereotypical depiction but a true one. Alexie belongs to the contemporary generation of writers who give a portrayal of things as they are, of the real life of contemporary Native Americans. They are not presented romantically as noble savages or primitive human beings, but as ordinary people. Young Native American people are often torn between the life on reservation and the white mainstream society. Alexie assigns another task to them - not to forget their ethnic origins and to try to preserve their culture and traditions. There is a debate about the preservation of culture and traditions in terms of interracial marriages and mix-blooded individuals. Alexie sees children coming from Native American and white relationships ambiguously. They are not only torn between the native and white world, they also have to
80 cope with the ethnic origins of their parents. Alexie further claims that interracial marriages subvert Native American cultural preservation. Despite his disapproving view on interracial marriages, he admits that mix-blooded individuals are better off and safer because they look white. I suggested that many young Native Americans do not agree with the thinking of the previous generations, mostly with their parents‘ generation, which has a great impact on making their identities. They have to overcome their parents‘ opinions on white people and mainstream society. Alexie made some of his characters not to blame only white people for the Native American conditions, but to accept a certain amount of responsibility for them as well. Alexie further proposes that the improvement of Native American – white relationships can be reached also by white people´s recognition of the deeds acted out by them. From the 1960s on, writers started to look at history from their points of view. Alexie follows this revisionist attitude towards history and provides non-Native readers with his interpretation of history. Sometimes, the non-Native readers can feel uncomfortable about it. But it is what Alexie wants. He wants them to reflect on it and recognize their acts towards Native Americans. Alexie writes for both Native and non-Native readers. This might be a difficult task. When people started to be interested in and learn about the other with the coming of postmodernism, ethnic minorities included, they did so through the media of popular culture.125 Alexie wins the readers‘ favour by referring to popular culture, to music for instance. Paradoxically, he blames popular culture, especially the medium of television, and mainstream society for creating stereotypes about Native Americans who eventually accept these stereotypes and try to behave according to them. One example presented in all analysed novels and short stories is the warrior-like image of Native Americans on the male-dominated reservation. Alexie tries to break this stereotype that could be considered as one of the metanarratives despised by postmodernism.
125 Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, p. 136 81
Alexie not only uses the literary means of postmodernism such as blurring of boundaries and graphical and temporal fragmentation, but also follows postmodern approaches to the interpretation of society. In the thesis, I showed that Alexie is highly influenced by postmodernism, even though some scholars claim it has been over since the 1990s. Further, on the example of Sherman Alexie, I can conclude that young adult novels are popular with ethnic authors who follow the genre of postmodern bildungsroman. From his novels, we can learn about contemporary Native American young adults who are still burdened with their ethnicity in the present-day American society.
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Resume
Tato diplomová práce se zabývá postavením a možnostmi současných dospívajících Indiánů na základě analýzy vybraných děl současného indiánského autora. Práce analyzuje romány Reservation Blues, Flight, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian a povídky „The Toughest Indian in the World,― „Saint Junior,― a „The Search Engine― od Shermana Alexieho. Práce zachycuje, v jakých podmínkách vyrůstají současní mladí Indiáni a jaké faktory se podílí na utváření jejich identity. Práce se také zabývá současným názorem na Indiány a pojednává o tom jestli, a jak, se v analyzovaných dílech promítají prvky postmodernismu, ve kterém autor vyrůstal. Analýza ukázala, že současní mladí Indiáni musí prokázat velké úsíli, aby se prosadili za hranicemi rezervace v bílé mainstreamové společnosti, která nabízí vice možností pro uplatnění. Musí přitom čelit negativnímu přijetí jejich rozhodnutí hledat lepší život právě v mainstreamové společnosti ze strany obyvatel rezervace, ale take zakořeněným předsudkům o Indiánech ze strany této společnosti.
The diploma thesis deals with the issue of position of contemporary Native American young adults on the basis of an analysis of selected works by contemporary Native American writer. The thesis analyses Sherman Alexie´s novels Reservation Blues, Flight, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian and short stories „The Toughest Indian in the World,“ „Saint Junior,“ a „The Search Engine.“ The thesis depicts the conditions in which young adult Native Americans grow up and the factors which influence the formation of their identity. The thesis further deals with whether and how postmodern features appear in the author´s works. The analysis suggests that contemporary Native American young adults have to be very strong in order to succeed in white mainstream society which offers more opportunities for assertion. They are exposed to a negative acceptance of their decision to pursue better life outside the reservation in the mainstream society. They also have to face prejudices and stereotypes about Native Americans held by the mainstream society.
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Bibliography
Primary sources:
Alexie, Sherman: Reservation Blues. New York: Warner Books, 1996. ---. ―The Toughest Indian in the World.‖ The Toughest Indian in the World. New York: Atlantic Monthly Express, 2000. ---. ―Saint Junior.‖ The Toughest Indian in the World. New York: Atlantic Monthly Express, 2000. ---. ―The Search Engine.‖ Ten Little Indians. London: Vintage, 2003. ---. Flight. New York: Black Cat, 2007. ---. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little Brown, 2007.
Secondary sources:
Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. ―Teaching the Young Adult Novel.‖ Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1991. Berkhofer, Robert, F., The white man’s Indian : images of the American Indian from Columbus to the present. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Bobulová, Ivana. ―A Brief History of Children‘s Literature. The Conception of Childhood.‖ Bobulová, Ivana et.al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003. Bubíková, Šárka. ―Seeing Ourselves as the Other.‖ Children’s Literature in English at the Turn of the Millennium. Eds. Bohuslav Mánek, Ralph Slayton and Pavla Machová. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2002. 103-112. ---. ―Growing Up Postmodern.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, 131-141. ---. ―Growing up and the Quest for Identity.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, 97-113. ---. Úvod do studia dětství v americké literatuře. Univerzita Pardubice, 2009. 84
Chalupský, Petr. ―Freedom, Spontainety, Imagination and the Loss of Innocence – the Theme of Childhood in Ian McEwan‘s Fiction.‖ Bubíková, Šárka et. al. Literary Childoods: Growing Up in British and American Literature. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, 51 – 65. Donelson, Ken, and Alleen Pace Nilsen. „Young Adult Fiction.― Literature for Today’s Young Adults. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2007, p. 1869- 1889. Fixico, Donald. ―Federal and State Policies and American Indians.‖ A Companion to American Indian History. Eds. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2002, 2004, p. 379-397. Grassian, Daniel. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Hunt, Peter. Literature for children: contemporary criticism. London: Routledge,1992. Moore, David L. ―Sherman Alexie: irony, intimacy, and agency.‖ The Cambridge Guide to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 297-309. Lewis, Barry. ―Word Salad Days: Postmodernism and Literature, 1960-1990‖. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 121 – 133. Owens, Louis. Other Destinies. Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Pokrivčáková, Silvia. ―Children‘s Literature and Its Study.‖ Bobulová, Ivana, et al. Children’s and Juvenile Literature (Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003. 9 – 13. Porter, Joy. ―Historical and cultural contexts to Native American literature.‖ The Cambridge Guide to Native American Literature. Ed. Joy Porter. Cambridge University Press, 2005. 39-66. Powers, Richard G. ―Sports and American Culture.” Ed. Luther S. Luedtke, Making America : the society and culture of the United States, 1990. 207- 220.
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Reynolds, Kimberley. „Subversion and Juvenile Fiction.‖ Chilldren’s Literature in the 1890s and the 1990s. Plymouth: Northcote House: 1994. ---. ―Sociology, Politics, the Family: Children and Families in Anglo-American Children‘s Fiction, 1920-60.‖ Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Ed. Kimberley Reynolds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 23-41. Sainsbury, Lisa. ―Childhood, Youth Culture and the Uncanny: Uncanny Nights in Contemporary Adolescent Fiction.‖ Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Ed. Kimberley Reynolds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 124-139. Storey, John. ―Postmodernism and Popular Culture.‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 147-157. Thacker, Deborah. „Playful Subversion.“ Introducing children‘s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge, 2002, 139-150. Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature: A brief introduction and anthology. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Vosková, Monika. ―Through the Looking Glass: Children‘s Literature as a Mirror of Contemporary Society.‖ Children’s Literature in English at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Bohuslav Mánek, Ralph Slayton and Pavla Machová. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2002. 90-96. Vránková, Kamila. ―The Beginnings of American Children‘s Literature.‖ Children’s Literature in English at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Bohuslav Mánek, Ralph Slayton and Pavla Machová. Hradec Králové: Gaudeamus, 2002. 113-117. Watson, Nigel. ―Postmodernism and Lifestyles (or: You Are What You Buy).‖ The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Ed. Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001, p. 53 – 64.
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List of Appendices
Appendix 1: The cover of Reservation Blues Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Warner Books, 1996. Appendix 2: Reservation Blues: a brief summary Appendix 3: A blues lyrics from Reservation Blues Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Warner Books, 1996, p. 128. Appendix 4: The cover of The Toughest Indian in the World Alexie, Sherman. The Toughest Indian in the World. New York: Atlantic Monthly Express, 2000. Appendix 5: ―The Toughest Indian in the World‖: a brief summary Appendix 6: ―Saint Junior‖: a brief summary Appendix: The cover of Ten Little Indians Alexie, Sherman. Ten Little Indians. London: Vintage, 2003. Appendix 7: ―The Search Engine‖: a brief summary Appendix 8: The cover of Flight Alexie, Sherman. Flight. New York: Black Cat, 2007. Appendix 9: Flight: a brief summary Appendix 10: The cover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian Alexie, Sherman. Illus. Ellen Forney. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little Brown, 2007. Appendix 11: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian: a brief summary Appendix 12: An Illustration from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian Alexie, Sherman. Illus. Ellen Forney. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little Brown, 2007, p. 14. Appendix 13: A brief biography of Sherman Alexie ShermanAlexie.com: The Official Site of Sherman Alexie. Fallsapart. 14 Jan 2009.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
The cover of Reservation Blues
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Appendix 2
A blues lyrics from Reservation Blues:
―My God Has Dark Skin‖
My braids were cut off in the name of Jesus, To make me look so white, My tongue was cut out in the name of Jesus, So I would not speak what‘s right, My heart was cut out in the name of Jesus, So I would not try to feel, My eyes were cut out in the name of Jesus, So I could not see what‘s real.
Chorus: And I‘ve got news for you, But I‘m not sure where to begin, Yeah, I‘ve got news for you, My God has dark skin, My God has dark skin.
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Appendix 3
Reservation Blues: a brief summary
In his first novel, Alexie develops a story of young Spokane Indians who found a music band named Coyote Springs. They found the band on the advice of Robert Johnson´s guitar. Alexie incorporates imagination and elements of magic realism in the novel. The heroes who have never been outside the reservation before are set on a quest for better lives and for their identities. The main protagonists are Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Junior Polatkin, and Victor Joseph. With the noble idea of helping to improve the poor reservation conditions through their music, beginning with blues and ending with rock and punk, they go outside the reservation and try to success in the white mainstream world. Misunderstood by both native and white worlds, they come back to the reservation as traitors and outsiders.
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Appendix 4
The cover of The Toughest Indian in the World
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Appendix 5
―The Toughest Indian in the World‖: a brief summary
„The Toughest Indian in the World― is a story from Alexie´s collection of short stories The Toughest Indian in the World (2000). It is a story about an unnamed Spokane Indian reporter who lives in a white world. He is not comfortable there because he is not respected nor understood. He is affected by his childhood and his father´s opinions on white people. He deliberately left the reservation but feels disconnected from his culture. He reaches a kind of reconnection with the supposedly toughest Indian in the world, a Lummi boxer.
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Appendix 6
―Saint Junior‖: a brief summary
The short story ―Saint Junior‖ comes from a collection of short stories The Toughest Indian in the World” (2000). It tells a story of a married couple Roman and Grace Fury who live on the Spokane Indian reservation. By numerous flashbacks into the past Alexie describes the growing up of the two characters, particularly their college experiences. They had to face racism and struggle against stereotypes held about Native Americans. The importance of basketball is also discussed in the story.
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Appendix 7
The cover of Ten Little Indians
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Appendix 8
―The Search Engine‖: a brief summary
The short story ―The Search Engine‖ is the opening story of Alexie‘s short story collection Ten Little Indians (2003). The main character is a Spokane Indian girl Corliss who is studying at Washington State University. There she finds a book of poetry by Spokane Indian writer Harlan Atwater. Corliss decides to find the poet. Corliss loves poetry which her family finds a waste of time, especially poetry by white authors. She wants to prove her family that there is poetry even by Spokane author and that it is good. When she finds Harlan, he does not seem to be what she expected.
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Appendix 9 The cover of Flight
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Appendix 10
Flight: a brief summary
Flight (2007) was Sherman Alexie´s first novel after ten years. It is a portrayal of an orphaned, mix-blooded Indian teenager Zits whom Alexie sends on a time travel through history so that he finds out his true identity. Zits inhabits bodies of different people in different times. He is an FBI agent in Idaho in the 1970s, an Indian boy witnessing the battle at Little Bighorn, a nineteenth century Indian tracker, a contemporary pilot, and finally his own father who abandoned him at birth. This time travel has a huge impact on Zits identity and so he changes from a juvenile delinquent to a boy settled with white family. The novel is hilarious and sad at the same time and its fantasy form is appealing to young adult readers.
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Appendix 11
The cover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
102
Appendix 12
An illustration from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
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Appendix 13
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian: a brief summary
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007) is a second young adult novel by Sherman Alexie. Alexie draws on his own life experiences which makes the novel highly autobiographical. The main character of the story, Arnold Spirit alias Junior, is a fourteen years old Spokane Indian. He lives on the reservation but decides to change the reservation high school for a white high school in white city of Reardan. A lot of problems arise from his decision. He is considered a traitor by the people on the reservation. He experiences racism and prejudices in the white town. Alexie gives a story attracting young adult readers for its humour, diary form, and extraordinary contemporary hero.
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Appendix 14
A brief biography of Sherman Alexie
- Born: October 1966, on Spokane Indian Reservation, Wellpinit, Washington - Education: BA in American Studies at Washington State University, Pullman, Washington - Work: - Collections of poetry: The Business of Fancydancing (1991); I Would Steal Horses (1992); First Indian on the Moon (1993); The Summer of Black Widows (1996); Face (2009); etc. - Collections of short stories: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993); The Toughest Indian in the World (2000); Ten Little Indians (2003); War Dances (2009) - Novels: Reservation Blues (1995); Indian Killer (1996); Flight (2007); The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) - Screenplays: Smoke Signals (1998); The Business of Fancydancing (2002) - Awards: - Awards for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: 2007 National Book Award for Young People‘s Literature; National Parenting Publication Gold Winner 2007; Publishers Weekly 2007 Best Books of the Year – Children‘s Fiction; 2008 American Indian Library Association American Indian Youth Literature Award; 2008 Pacific Northwest Book Award; 2009 Odyssey Award for audio version; etc. - Other awards: 1993 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award Citation; 1996 Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40; 2007 Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award; 2008 Stranger Genius Award in Literature; etc.
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