The Transgenerational Trauma in Sherman Alexie's

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Anna Vacková

The Transgenerational Trauma in Sherman Alexie’s Autobiographical Writing Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2018

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. for his helpful approach and valuable advice he provided me. I would also like to thank my family, friends, and my partner for their support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1. SHERMAN ALEXIE ...... 3

The Analysed Works ...... 7

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ...... 9

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir ...... 10

2. THE CONCEPT OF TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA ...... 12

3. ANALYSIS ...... 18

4. CONCLUSION ...... 30

5. WORKS CITED ...... 32

6. ABSTRACT ...... 37

7. RESUMÉ ...... 38

Introduction

The colonization of the Americas by Europeans is undoubtedly one of the most romanticized achievements of a civilized man (viz. Manifest Destiny). However, there are two sides to every story. For Native American people, the colonization represents a grievous milestone in their history which have disrupted their original way of life beyond repair. This thesis strives to explore the way in which the past traumatization, originating in the genocidal actions and loss experienced by Native Americans in the hands of their Euro-American perpetrators, connects to the contemporary maladies as well as ongoing forms of oppression troubling the Native American communities and how is this phenomenon manifested in the selected autobiographical writings of a contemporary Native American author Sherman Alexie.

The first chapter of this thesis provides the brief history of Native American literature and contextualises Sherman Alexie among other Native American authors.

The chapter further describes Alexie’s literary and personal qualities that differentiate him from his contemporaries, such as his engagement in American popular culture, the way he parodies historical Native American misrepresentations in his writing, or his unique “mix-blood” position in the multi-ethnical environment. Subsequently, the distinctive characteristics of Native American autobiographical writing style are described. The brief synopsis of selected writings, namely The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir are also included at the end of the chapter.

The second chapter introduces the transgenerational trauma theory proposed by

Native American theoretician Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart. The chapter begins with the delineation of the harmful historical legacy of colonization and further

1 oppression of Native American people during the postcolonial era. Additionally, the statistical data concerning health and welfare disparities between Native American and white U.S. communities are provided in order to avoid possible miscomprehensions or generalizations regarding the contemporary state of affairs. The rest of the chapter deals with the three main pillars of the transgenerational trauma: “the survivor’s child complex, disenfranchised grief, and intergenerational transmission” (Brave Heart and

DeBruyn 61) and with their respective historical, social, and psychological causes and implications.

The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the trauma in Alexie’s selected stories. The aim of the analysis is to exemplify the transgenerational trauma patterns present in the Alexie’s writing. Also, given the Alexie’s juxtaposition between Native

American and white urban culture, particular focus is given to the theme of individual agency as opposed to traumatic legacy.

1. Sherman Alexie

Over the course of the last five decades, the study of Native American literature has gained its recognition among literary critics and became sought-after by academics as well as being established by universities into their curriculums for ethnic and race studies. The consensus among many literary theoreticians1 dates the beginning of the

American Indian literary renaissance to 1968 when N. Scott Momaday, then obscure author of Kiowa descent, won the Pulitzer Prize for his first book House Made of Dawn

(1968). The field initially dominated by anthropologists, folklorists and historians became a sphere of great interest among the newly arising group of experts specializing in American Indian literature (Roemer 1). The call for Native American prose and poetry elicited a response from and motivated American Indian authors to greater prolificity. The first wave of Native American writers2 was followed by authors of generation X3 among which belongs Sharman Alexie (1966), one of the most prolific writers among present-day American authors (Berglund 12) and one of the most well- known social commentators in the contemporary Native American literary and intellectual circles. Kenneth M. Roemer even describes him as a figure who, unlike his peers, managed to reach “the celebrity status” (2), which can be attributed to Alexie’s involvement in popular culture (Grassian 6-7).

The list of artistic activities he was, or still is, actively engaged in, contains besides writing, prose as well as poetry, also stand-up comedy performance and directorial work (MacGowan 190). Grassian associates the multitude of Alexie’s proficiencies to “the role of a trickster” who uses artistic devices in favour of his own outcomes (11-12). Jeff Berglund, on the other hand, ascribes Alexie’s many talents and

1 Kenneth M. Roemer (2005), Dr. P. Jane Hafen (2002), David L. Moore (2005), Louis Owens (1992) 2 Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko 3 Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan 3 his consequent popularity to Alexie’s innate creativity and sense of humour combined with his extraliterary public appearances at universities’ discussions and forums (20) and his frequent participation in various interviews (23).

Alexie was born on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington, to the father of Coeur d’Alene descent and the mother of Spokane origin. The reservation upbringing, living in the small and shabby HUD house, low cost house projected and built by US Department of Housing and Urban Development, with his four siblings and being part of a community defined by violence, alcoholism and general lack of opportunities and positive role-models for young people,4 became the source of themes and settings for Alexie’s future writing career (Grassian 6). Another topic that Alexie employs in his works5 is the motif of urban Indians and their struggle for the preservation of their culture and identity in ethnically diverse surroundings (Berglund

12). Christopher MacGowan writes, “His themes include isolation, alcoholism, domestic violence, and the oppression, stereotyping, and general mistreatment of Native

Americans and their heritage by the dominant culture…” (190). Serious and controversial as these topics are, Alexie manages to talk about them candidly and without shame often employing self-ridicule or wry commentaries of social practices.

“His insider’s view of the Indian world, when combined with confessional detail, creates an intimate distance from a non-Indian audience that is one key to the ironic strength of his voice” (Moore 297).

Education was another aspect that greatly influenced the forming of Alexie’s literary persona as well as his critical view of intercultural relations between the white majority and Native Americans. Being subjected to missionary-like reservation

4 This assumption is drawn from the description provided by Alexie in the first chapter of his memoir You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir (3-29) dealing with his childhood years spent on the reservation 5 Indian Killer (1996), Flight (2007), War Dances (2009) 4 schooling ignorant of Native American culture at Wellpinit tribal school with outdated books and brutal teachers, which is described in Alexie’s memoir You Don’t Have to

Say You Love Me: a Memoir (174-178), and his later attending an all-white high school in Reardan, Washington, resulted in Alexie having a distorted perception of identity6 and, especially, a sardonic sense of humour. In order to escape bullying and to demonstrate his intellect and wit, strengthened by intensive reading (Berglund 7-8),

“[Alexie] quickly learned the value of humor both as a means of deflecting the abuse of other children and also as a means of personal empowerment” (Grassian 2). The humour often enables comics to quite openly address very controversial topics such as racism or abuse, similarly, Alexie’s writing is suffused with satiric humour and poignant social commentary concerning the post-colonial oppression of America’s indigenous people by whites as well as problems among Native Americans and maladies taking place on the Indian reservations. Norma C. Wilson writes in her essay

“America’s indigenous poetry,” “Alexie is sometimes starkly serious, at others, wildly hilarious” (157). These two features are the essential core of Alexie’s literary accomplishment. Berglund notes, “Alexie’s inventive style conveys to readers his characters’ suffering and anguish but also the enduring power of humor and imagination” (17).

Furthermore, Alexie’s success among Native American but also non-Indian readers stems from his unique “mix-blood” stance between popular predominantly white culture and his native origin, which enables him to an even greater level of intercultural practice. In other words, Alexie does not speak his native tongue and oscillates between urban and reservation way of life, for which he differentiates from

6 Alexie’s conflicted identity is presented, for example, in his first collection of poems The Business of Fancydancing, in the poem “13/16” (16)

5 many of his literary contemporaries. David Murray in his essay “Translation and meditation” presents two ways in which one may perceive the concept of a mixed-blood

Indian:

A negative view has been to see the mixed-blood figure as representing a tragic

loss of Indianness, indicative of the demoralized and directionless condition of

Indians deprived of the ability to continue in traditional ways. But a more

positive way of looking at these figures is to see them as representing ways of

mediating and negotiating, rather than being defeated by, contradictions. (78)

Alexie represents both forms. He may have lost the immediate touch with his

“Indianness” because of receiving predominantly white school education and his general assimilation into life in Seattle, but he also fruitfully mediates between humour and seriousness, tradition and individualism, the past and the future of his people.

Daniel Grassian claims that the feature distancing Alexie from other American Indian writers is that he “is willing and believes it necessary to ground himself in the mire of reservation life” and unlike his peers “denies that Native American literature can forge any vast transformative changes” (30-31). Furthermore, Alexie (qtd. In Berglund) is well aware of an ordinary American Indian reader and often points out that many of his predecessors or contemporaries have lost touch with the reality and their writings would be rejected by Native American youth (16).

In a nutshell, even though Alexie “shares with many American Indian writers a central motif reaffirming Native lives and Native nationhood” (Moore 297), he does not advocate traditions and is far less romantic than many of his predecessors and peers. In words of David L. Moore, “Alexie rarely points toward the redemptive power of Native community as a direction for his protagonists’ struggles. Instead, his bold, sometimes

6 campy, style tends to affirm a more individual agency unique to Native identities”

(297). To be aware of Alexie’s bias and mechanisms behind his writing as well as his stance towards his own ethnicity and traditions while later dealing with themes of historical trauma caused to America’s indigenous people by white settlers during colonization and throughout the post-colonial era when relocations of tribes and establishment of boarding schools had taken place (Jan Johnson 226) is considered to be beneficial in the context of this work.

The Analysed Works

The works analysed in this paper are chosen for their predominantly autobiographical character since there is general ambiguity surrounding Alexie’s writing, “Alexie leaves it unclear as to whether his poetry should be read as autobiographical, especially since he repeatedly stresses the importance of imagination”

(Grassian 15). However, one should be aware of different perception in which Native

Americans perceive and express history, “Indian epistemological perspectives on history are often inclusive of story, myth, and symbolism and therefore inevitably clash with conventional history rooted in the search for verifiable facts and committed to rational plausibility” (Porter 61). Therefore, this paper does not strive to communicate the objective historical facts as such but rather the history rewritten from the Alexie’s point of view including distinctive notions characteristic for Native American people.

More specifically, it is almost impossible to divide the Native American autobiographic style from the culturally and historically conditioned perceptions of its writers. “Native American literature across time has voiced a different experience of

American history. It has voiced a different relationship to historical ‘facts’ and a

7 different consciousness of the past itself” (Porter 39). The three main pillars of autobiographical writing “self, life and writing” (Sweet Wong 126) are different concepts within the scope of European and Native American autobiographical literature.

The concept of self is within American Indian literature replaced by communal self which “while varied, tend[s] to share an emphasis on interrelatedness … and community, rather than individuality” (Sweet Wong 126). This “interrelatedness” is exhibited in Alexie’s memoir, for example, by shared experience of grief or perpetual cycle of physical abuse which affects generations of American Indians within as well as outside of Alexie’s family. Likewise, the European idea of life which would be worth sharing in form of a memoir or a personal history, is also altered by “indigenous ideas

[which] are inclusive of the partial, everyday experiences of ordinary people, rather than focused on the complete lives of important public people” (Sweet Wong 126); on that account, the American Indian autobiographies provide much more valid testimony while dealing with societal themes like Indian oppression and transgenerational trauma.

Additionally, the third pillar, writing as a means of communication, is equally modified since the phenomenon of American Indian literature is quite recent,7 compared to the history of European and white American literary tradition, and its structure developed from strong oral and visual tradition of storytelling, thus “while Native people have and do write autobiographies, historically, they spoke, drew, and performed aspects of their life stories” (Sweet Wong 126). Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez (qtd. in Porter) comes up with the notion that such literature, one that developed from oral tradition, is conversational in its core and therefore interactive (43). One may further suggest that conversational literature, unlike strictly descriptive one, demands a greater level of mutual and, in some cases, cross-cultural understanding between a reader and an author

7 Even though there have been literary works written in English language by American Indian authors as early as the end of 18th century, their volume is scarce (Roemer 1) and in the context of this paper rather insignificant. 8 and thus provides a more authentic experience for both sides, especially, while dealing with subjective emotions and deep-rooted societal themes such as historical trauma.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Alexie’s first novel written for young adult readership was published in 2007 and immediately became a great success since it was awarded the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in the same year of its publication (MacGowan 193). The narrator of the story Arnold Spirit Jr. and Alexie seem to have a lot in common; both come from Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, both have suffered from hydrocephaly as children and both love to read. Berglund writes, “Alexie fictionally revisits aspects of his childhood; he decided to novelize them, rather than include them in a memoir he’s writing because ‘nobody would actually [believe] it as a memoir’”

(12). Alexie’s assumption concerning the authenticity of his narrative and the reason for which he decided to transfer the story into more or less fictional level, may be explained by Angela Conolly who claims, “Any attempt to convey the reality of trauma requires the creation of new aesthetic forms that creatively blend different literary and artistic categories such as the historicized fiction…” (615). In other words, victims of genocide who were exposed to unimaginable atrocities done by another human beings, especially in a society that does not acknowledge the violation it has committed, may question their own memory and integrity of their narrative. Conolly continues, “The ability to remember, elaborate and imaginatively reflect on the experience of extreme trauma requires a capacity to maintain a sense of perspective and detachment from the memory” (615), provided that, one may perceive The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-

Time Indian as Alexie’s attempt to deliver his own personal trauma in the most open and believable way possible.

The main protagonist of the book Arnold Spirit Jr. is a fourteen-year-old Indian boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington. He is often bullied and mocked by other Indians on the reservation for his poor body constitution, love of reading and escapist fantasies. He considers himself to be “always the most available loser” (Alexie, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 17)8 when it comes to confrontation with bullies. The situation even aggravates when he decides to transfer from reservation high school to predominantly white one in Reardan, Washington. He becomes ostracized and troubled by other tribal members for mingling with whites and accused of betrayal of his own people, for example, some of the reservation dwellers begin to call him “an apple” which, as Junior explains, means that “they think [he is] red on the outside and white on the inside” (Alexie, ATD 132). The book portrays the difficulty of finding one’s identity in a multi-cultural environment and need for self- determination in contrast to resignation and following of historically conditioned patterns of behaviour prevalent among Native American communities. Alexie notes in an online interview “[the book’s] theme is about escape, I hope it encourages all sorts of trapped people to feel like they can escape” (“Sherman Alexie Captures the Voice”).

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir

The intention to write a historical narrative crossed Alexie’s mind at least once in the past and according to Daniel Grassian (6) and Jeff Berglund (18) Alexie already had been working on a memoir narrating the history of men in his family. However, that memoir was never finished, neither had Alexie published any other strictly biographical non-fictional prose up to the publication of You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a

Memoir in 2017. The story maps Alexie’s life since childhood until very recent past,

8 Hereafter cited in the text as ATD 10 primarily his familial bonds and his upbringing in the realities of the Spokane reservation. The central motif pervading the whole book is the complicated relationship between Alexie and his mother, Lilian. The notion of Leigh Gilmore who assumes that

Alexie “needed to write it in order to untangle and understand his feelings about his mother and the lasting pain of her death” (683) corresponds well with the intricate nature of Lilian’s character caused by untreated bipolar disorder as well as her own

“haunting” past. The author himself addresses the issue in an interview from 2017 “I came to more fully understand how her personal trauma greatly influenced and sometimes caused the destructive and self-destructive ways she moved in the world”

(Alexie, “THE CARNEGIE SHORTLIST”).

The book is written in an experimental way which is manifested mainly through the manner in which the narrative voice fluently switches between prose and poetry.

The chapters are not ordered chronologically, but they are rather arranged in compliance with Alexie’s stream of thoughts and natural associations. On the one hand, the resulting “ruggedness” of the book, which can be ascribed to the diversity of writing styles dominated by Alexie as well as to Conolly’s idea of new or unusual aesthetic form which would enable the author to express the traumatic experience authentically and imaginatively (615), may clash with readers’ expectations of biographical narrative.

On the other hand, the possibility of being involved in the complex process of the author’s meditation creates a more intimate and personal atmosphere that would be hardly experienced while reading a conventional biography.

2. The Concept of Transgenerational Trauma

Theoreticians of Native American historical trauma9 have reached the consensus that the traumatization of America’s indigenous people commenced in the fifteenth century when colonization of the Americas by European settlers had begun resulting in millions of Indians dying due to diseases or in violent combats with European colonists.

Later, the pursuit of the Manifest Destiny had driven white colonists farther into the

Indian territory and left many tribes stripped of their land and natural resources.

Frequent relocations of tribes and long walks they had to endure during the treaty era decimated already decreased numbers of Native American people even more. European colonists’ stance towards the “Indian problem” resulted in the cycle of assimilative and terminative actions and policies, such as institutionalisation of boarding schools, which not only severely disrupted natural familial bonds within Native American lineages but almost annihilated American Indian culture and spirituality and continues to damage

Native Americans’ way of life up to this day (Brave Heart 8).

The oppression of American Indians and further depletion of their lands is one of persisting phenomena, Joy Porter writes, “Contemporary Indian communities face acute ongoing threats to the sovereignty of their remaining land base and to the ecological balance of Indian environments from, amongst other things, nuclear testing, nuclear waste disposal, coal strip mining and oil, logging, and uranium extraction” (40).

Similarly pressing are health disparities between US white majority and American

Indian ethnic group. According to figures published by National Congress of American

Indians, Native Americans in comparison with the rest of the U.S. population face higher death rates due to alcoholism and consequent cirrhosis of liver, mental illnesses, and diseases such as tuberculosis or diabetes (“Demographics”). “The largest death rate

9 Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart (1998), Teresa Evans-Campbell (2008), Eduardo Duran et al. (1998), Kathleen Brown-Rice (2013) 12 disparity for urban AI/AN[10] compared with urban White persons was for chronic liver disease and cirrhosis followed by homicide … and diabetes” (Jacobs-Wingo et al. 908).

The statistics concerning American Indians living in the rural areas show even worse numbers for aforementioned causes of death (Jacobs-Wingo et al. 909). Furthermore, young Native Americans are the group with the highest suicide rate in the U.S.

(“Demographics”). Higher percentage of alcohol and drug abuse as well as higher criminality rate or a number of families living below the poverty line are yet another features dividing Native Americans from the rest of the U.S. population (Brave Heart

8). Need for a psychoanalytical theory which would elucidate negative behavioural tendencies of American Indians and social discrepancies between U.S. majority and

Native Americans brought forth the theory of transgenerational trauma.

The concept of transgenerational trauma,11 originally associated with descendants of Holocaust survivors (Mohatt et al. 2), was introduced to the context of

Native American realities by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart in order to clarify social pathologies pervading Native American communities and disparities concerning uneven quality of life of American Indians compared to US white majority (Brave Heart and

DeBruyn 60). She and her collaborator define the concept as “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences” (Brave Heart 7) where the mentioned trauma experiences stand for “the loss of lives, land, and vital aspects of Native culture promulgated by the European conquest of the Americas” (Brave Heart and DeBruyn

60). Individuals suffering from transgenerational trauma often behave in a self- destructive manner whether they are hurting themselves physically or through alcohol

10 American Indian/Alaska Native 11 Synonymous terms which one may encounter in reference literature describing “the multigenerational nature of distress in communities, [include] collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, multigenerational trauma, and historical trauma” (Evans-Campbell 320). 13 and drug abuse (Brave Heart 7). Brave Heart and DeBruyn present the three main constituents of the historical trauma “the survivor’s child complex, disenfranchised grief, and intergenerational transmission” (61) which each has its own specific social implications and emotional responses.

Firstly, the concept of disenfranchised grief entails a “grief that persons experience when a loss cannot be openly acknowledged or publicly mourned” (Brave

Heart and DeBruyn 66), that is to say, the cultural expectations and norms concerning experience of loss, such as, appropriate emotional response or the way and duration of one’s mourning, are culturally conditioned and often very distinct in different cultures.

Mourning rituals and burial ceremonies always have been fundamental coping mechanisms for American Indians while confronted with loss or bereavement; however, these practices were outlawed by U.S. policymakers in 1881 and Indians were denied mourning the dead or loss of their land in the traditional way or to do so in secrecy

(Brave Heart 8-9). Additionally, “In the dominant United States culture, grief is recognized and considered legitimate only when the relationship to the deceased is an immediate kinship tie” (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 66) whereas American Indians perceive themselves as a part of communal kinship and on spiritual a level even related to nature; “For American Indians, land, plants, and animals are considered sacred relatives, far beyond a concept of property. Their loss became a source of grief” (Brave

Heart and DeBruyn 62). Native Americans’ grief was further disregarded by the widespread belief stemming from the historical view of Indians as stoic and primitive savages that Indians are not capable of mourning and have no need to do so (Brave

Heart and DeBruyn 67). Joy Porter explains this point further, “Non-Indians understood

Indians in antithesis to themselves: because they thought themselves civilized, dynamic, and in history they judged Indians to be culturally static and somehow outside of

14 history” (45). In other words, any emotional or social process detected among American

Indians that could had been perceived as a display of social refinement was readily rejected by white population as untruthful and therefore insignificant (Porter 45). The implications of unresolved grief are besides “an intensification of normative emotional reactions such as anger, guilt, sadness, and helplessness” also feelings of subordination, shame, and powerlessness (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 67).

Secondly, the survivor’s child complex is a psychological syndrome consisting of negative psychological features such as depression, self-depreciation, feelings of guilt and isolation, and a perception that one is responsible for taking part in ancestral suffering. Children of survivors tend to be overprotective of their parents and often feel obliged to rectify the wrongs of the past or need to compensate for the misery that their ancestors have experienced. These children often perceive the world as a hostile and unsafe place which results in an occurrence of various coping mechanisms such as compensatory fantasies (Duran et al. 342). Contemporary generations of American

Indians are probably most profoundly affected by the traumatizing legacy of boarding schools (Haag 149). Ever since the opening of Carlisle Indian School in 1879, the parental and familial patterns natural to Native Americans were repeatedly disrupted and impaired; “The destructive and shaming messages inherent in the boarding school system, whether BIA[12] or mission schools, were that American Indian families are not capable of raising their own children and that American Indians are culturally and racially inferior” (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 63). The collapse of parental and familial structures and the non-nurturing character of such bonds is often associated with high rates of domestic violence and child abuse in Native American families (Brown-Rice

119). Another impact of the boarding school era period contributing to the phenomenon

12 Bureau of Indian Affairs 15 of interfamilial abusive behaviour among Native Americans is the “identification with the aggressor” which describes the way in which oppressed individuals adopt aggressive behaviour of authority figures (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 70).

Thirdly, the phenomenon of transgenerational transmission exhibits itself through feelings of guilt and shame experienced by contemporary generations of Native

Americans for their ancestors’ grievous history as well as more recent “traumatic losses of relatives and community members through alcohol-related accidents, homicide, and suicide” (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 68). According to Teresa Evans-Campbell, the transmission of the historical trauma is caused by the manner in which “descendents continue to identify emotionally with ancestral suffering” (321). Noteworthy is also the notion of Evans-Campbell describing the way in which individual, familial, and communal traumatization interact and perpetuate each other; she writes in her essay,

“Individual responses are influenced by familial experiences, and responses at both the individual and familial levels are dependent on community-level responses to historical trauma. At same time, community responses are constantly reinforced by actions at the individual and family levels” (322). The resulting cumulative psychological wounding caused by unchangeable past combined with “modem psychosocial problems [which] are superimposed upon a background of historically traumatic losses across generations” (Brave Heart 8) experienced at individual, familial and communal level contributes to never-ending “layering” of the trauma resulting in psychological numbing, internalized aggression and self-destructive tendencies among American

Indians. (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 68-69). Moreover, the past events ceaselessly reinterpret themselves into the contemporary public narrative which creates further

“layering of narrative turns” and becomes part of collective memory (Mohatt et al. 3).

Similarly, one cannot remove historical trauma of American Indians from the public

16 narrative of the U.S. white population and as Brow-Rice suggests, “discrimination could be an aggravating factor” in context of the perpetuation of trauma (123).

3. Analysis

This chapter provides a psychoanalytical reading of Alexie’s autobiographical writings, namely, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir using the framework of the transgenerational trauma theory delineated in the previous chapter. The analysis strives to explain and exemplify the ways in which historical trauma influences contemporary generations of American

Indians, particularly, the role of stereotypes in cross-cultural discourse concerning trauma narrative validation, Native American notion of identity and self-worth, the cycle of internalized oppression, and self-destructive behavioural tendencies, such as inclination of American Indians towards substance abuse. Also, the analysis explores the pattern of trauma transmission within family and community. The selected works serve as representations of general Native American trauma narratives but Alexie’s individual agency and personal connections to historical trauma and ongoing forms of colonialism are also taken into consideration.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the theory of transgenerational trauma applied to American Indian ethnic group is based on premises of experienced genocide and loss which is largely unrecognized or disregarded by the white majority of the U.S population. This results in disenfranchised grief which further traumatizes Native

American people. The theme of the historical loss and oppression reverberates through both Alexie’s books. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Alexie humorously and yet grievously meditates on the early co-existence of American indigenous people and white colonists, he writes, “I always think it’s funny when

Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during that first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting

Indians” (101). He deromanticizes the theme of Thanksgiving and presents it from the

Native American perspective as the beginning of his people’s annihilation. In a like manner, Alexie touches upon the legacy of the boarding school era in the dialogue between Mr. P, white reservation teacher, and Junior when Mr. P openly admits “We

[reservation teachers] were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child” and further explains that reservation teachers were trained to “…kill Indian culture” (ATD 35).

Alexie’s phrasing concerning cultural genocide carried out through education of young

Native Americans closely resemble the famous quote of Captain Henry Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (“Kill the Indian”). One may assume that Alexie uses the association intentionally to remind his readers of the past wrongs committed against his people but also to imply an ongoing process of forced assimilation of Native Americans.

Unlike The Diary, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir contains more metaphorically articulated accounts of historical loss. For example, in the poem

“Eulogy,” Alexie mourns not only loss of his mother but mainly loss of the tribal language. The author likens his mother to a “dictionary” and “encyclopedia” for her knowledge of ancestral tongue, tales, and songs (YDH 159).13 He also acknowledges that Lilian’s death prefigures complete loss of Spokane ancient oral tradition because

“She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years. / She knew words that will never be spoken again” (Alexie, YDH 162). In the context of American Indian realities, the loss of oral tradition means loss of culture, communal identity, and ancestral knowledge since all these features are deeply enrooted in American Indian folklore (Haag 155; Porter 42). Similarly, Alexie mourns the loss of the salmon which had been the essential part of Salish peoples’ deity and diet, Alexie writes:

we worship

13 Hereafter cited in the text as YDH 19

the salmon

because we

eat salmon (YDH 184).

The salmon disappeared from the Spokane rivers because of the construction of Grand

Coulee Dam. Alexie regards the dam to be “an epic gravestone” for Spokane people since it “scientifically and spiritually … murdered [his] tribe’s history ... [a]nd murdered

[his] tribe’s relationship with its future” (YDH 180). As previously mentioned,

American Indians’ perception of nature as extended kin and provider is quite different from the Euro-American materialistic one (Haag 155). Accordingly, loss of land, plants, animals or any other vital aspect of nature necessary for group’s sustenance was likely to be experienced by Native American communities as something highly distressing possibly almost to the point of existential crisis; Alexie writes, “What is it like to be a

Spokane Indian without wild Salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb” (YDH 181). Bearing in mind Alexie’s words, one may assume that, unlike Christians, Spokane people have definitively lost their deity, their original way of life, and their hope for salvation.

Besides the historical loss, Alexie’s characters have to face many present losses.

In the course of one year, Junior experiences deaths of his grandmother, friend, and sister which are just a fracture of the whole number of people he has lost over the fourteen years of his existence. Consequently, he comes to a conclusion that “the biggest difference between Indians and white people” is the number of funerals they have attended (Alexie, ATD 199); he notes, “All my white friends can count their deaths on one hand. I can count my fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, ears, nose, penis, butt cheeks, and nipples, and still not get close to my deaths” (Alexie, ATD 200). This

20 summation expresses how much more suffering are Native Americans put through and how much more grief they experience on communal as well as individual level. Junior’s losses are based on the real-life events that Alexie experienced. Moreover, he also lost his father in 2003 due to alcoholic kidney failure and his mother died of cancer in 2015

(Alexie, YDH 5). And, as Alexie suggests, the loss awaits him even in the future; “based on health statistics and lifestyles, I would bet that I’m going to outlive my reservation- based siblings as well. It’s a morbid thought. But it’s not inaccurate” (YDH 93).

Whilst the discussion in the preceding paragraphs substantiates the presence of historical and present loss in Alexie’s writing, it is necessary to examine the intercultural consideration of that loss in order to meet Brave Heart’s notion of disenfranchised grief, that is to say, the grief which is not validated by the general public. The popular stereotypical perception of American Indians as uncivilized, primitive and non-feeling enabled the phenomenon to occur and concurrently with other stereotypes continue to interfere with the inability of Native Americans to complete their grieving process and overcome the past traumatization. Native American communities and individuals are often stereotyped by white U.S. population because of insufficient knowledge or indirect experience based on misrepresentations of Native

Americans in popular culture: “Stereotyping is a poor substitute for getting to know individuals at a more intimate, meaningful level” (Fleming 213). One may suggest that negative stereotyping contributes to intercultural tensions and feeds racism; also, unsubstantiated assumptions may divert or completely diminish the importance of otherwise pressing social problems, and therefore, perpetuate the disenfranchised grief.

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior encounters many stereotypes whether it is the notion of the white reservation dentist who “believed that

Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave [Indians] half

21 the Novocain” (Alexie, ATD 2) or the bright red Reardan’s Indian mascot (Alexie, ATD

56). However, more significant in the discourse of prevailing dismissive attitudes of white U.S. population towards maladies troubling Indian communities is the erroneous assumption of Junior’s white teachers, schoolmates, and their parents that Spokane

Indians “made lots of money because [they] had a casino” or the equally incorrect widespread belief “that the government just gives money to Indian “(Alexie, ATD 199). The veracity of this stereotype is reinforced by Fleming who writes, “By relying on stereotypes to describe Native Americans, whites come to believe that Indians are drunks, get free money from the government, and are made wealthy from casino revenue” (213). These stereotypes are often in direct contradiction with the reservation realities and disregard not only Native Americans’ individual agencies but also on the communal level their grief originating in poverty.

Having exemplified the mechanisms of formation of unresolved grief, it is also reasonable to analyse the theme of shame which is not only a common emotional response of Native Americans to the experienced unresolved grief but also plays an important role in self-stereotyping. Haag makes direct associations between the development of “deep cultural shame” and boarding school practices (157). The Native

American children were forbidden to use their native tongue or practice their culture in any way; also, they were constantly reminded of their inferior social status as well as evil and savage nature of their ethnicity (Haag 154). Alexie agrees with Haag and suggests an even greater level of institutional co-operation regarding the white assimilative endeavours: “Our parents did not teach us our tribal language. And that was mostly because of shame. The white government, white military, and white church worked together to shame indigenous people for being indigenous —for speaking the language” (YDH 534). The experienced and incessantly reaffirmed feeling of shame

22 results in the belief of one’s own inferiority and justified lack of prospects. Junior expresses this phenomenon in relation to poverty “It sucks to be poor and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian … It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it” (Alexie,

ATD 13). Feelings of one’s own unworthiness and identification with socially imposed stereotypical roles result in loss of aspirations, overall emotional numbing, and habitual resignation permeating American Indian families and communities; Mr. P shares with

Junior the following notion: “All these kids have given up … All your friends. All your bullies. And their mothers and fathers have given up, too. And their grandparents gave up and their grandparents before them … We’re all defeated” (Alexie, ATD 42). This notion also depicts the way in which the resignation transmits itself across generations, for, as Alexie writes, “quitting is contagious” (ATD 138).

However, despite his aforementioned claims, Alexie managed to escape the dismal realities of reservation life and untie himself from a vicious circle of self- shaming and marginalization. Alexie openly admits that he is and always will be stigmatized by the colonization (qtd. in Newton 414), but he is not powerless. Alexie himself, as well as his fictional alter ego Junior, seek resistance against culturally conditioned resignation in artistic expression and escapist fantasies. Junior uses his drawings to cope with loss and at the same time seeks an audience which would listen to his narrative and authenticate his grief, Junior asserts, “I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me” (Alexie, ATD 6). The same view is advocated by Johnson who claims that “Alexie’s stories are narratives of trauma seeking witnesses to his characters’—and, by extension, Native peoples’—grief and pain. Alexie wants to dramatize Native history, experience, and suffering to disrupt

23 widespread historical amnesia” (227). In addition to that, Alexie also strives to challenge American patriotism and national pride by “rewriting the history” and bringing the perpetrators to account for American Indian genocide (Grassian 8). One of the methods he uses in order to bring to prominence the Native American genocide is the strategic use of Holocaust imagery (Peterson 74). In the work titled “Tribalism,”

Alexie wonders why there is a museum commemorating Jewish Holocaust in the United

States but not the museum dedicated to Native American genocide: “What do I make of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?” and provides an answer which is respectful of the Holocaust legacy but critical of the United States’ hypocritical approach towards its own bloodstained past: “It is a grievous reminder … as necessary as any museum ever built. But it also proves to me how the United States closes its eyes against the pain it has caused (Alexie, YDH 402). Nevertheless, at the same time, Alexie admits that to change the view of the oblivious United States majority is almost impossible: “People outside of this country will tend to view what happened here as genocide. But you will not get people to admit that here. It's a very exclusivist view”

(“A World of Story-Smoke” 166).

Consequently, the disenfranchised grief, feelings of shame and subordination in combination with experienced loss of culture-defining aspects whether natural, such as land and natural resources essential for community sustenance, or social, such as language and spirituality, result in native American’s loss of identity. Alexie writes,

“After the Grand Coulee Dam murdered our wild salmon, we stopped being Spokane

Indians and became a Paraphrase of Spokane Indians. Our identity was clarified for us.

We are the Unsalmon People. We are Unsalmon. We are Un (YDH 233). One may suggest that the diminution of Spokane Indian identity to a mere prefix “un” denotes the loss and removal of a certain quality or even the antithesis to the original state,

24 accordingly, it may be implied that Alexie defines the contemporary state of Spokane

Indian identity as predominantly structured by loss and deprivation. This notion is further supported by another excerpt from the memoir: “all of us Spokanes and Coeur d’Alenes, after the Grand Coulee Dam, have been born into the Clan of Doing Our Best to Re-create and Replicate the Sacred Things That Were Brutally Stolen from Us”

(Alexie, YDH 192). Moreover, Alexie’s Native American identity is often further disqualified by white as well as Native American racists for his symbiotic connections with American urban mass culture: “These are the Natives who, like white racists, mistakenly attribute my success to my perceived whiteness” (Alexie, YDH 303). In an interview with Åse Nygren Alexie expands on this notion: “The whole idea of authenticity-ʻHow Indian are you?ʼ-is the most direct result of the fact that we don't know what an American Indian identity is. There is no measure anymore. There is no way of knowing, except perhaps through our pain. And so, we're lost. We're always wandering” (“A World of Story-Smoke” 157). However, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Junior resolves his identity crisis by identifying with a number of groups he belongs to as an extension to his ethnic identity, he claims, “sure, I was a

Spokane Indian, I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms”

(Alexie, ATD 217). All in all, Alexie acknowledges the loss of identity caused by colonial and post-colonial violative actions carried out against Native American people, but he also promotes the redemptive powers of individual agency as opposed to communal cohesiveness which often derives the identity from negative colonial legacy of loss and pain.

Having delineated the ways in which stereotyping, shame and loss of identity attribute to the mutual alienation of the two cultures and reaffirm the historically

25 conditioned self-perception of Native Americans, thus, perpetuate the phenomenon of disenfranchised grief, it is logical to shift the attention to the remaining two central constituents of the transgenerational trauma theory, the survivor’s child complex and transgenerational trauma transmission. Both these phenomena are considered simultaneously since their social implications are closely related. The theory states that the individuals suffering from the survivor’s child complex identify with their ancestor’s suffering and tend to be overprotective of their parents are grandparents.

Alexie refers to this theme in the poem called “The Quilting” in which he places himself and his siblings in the position of quilts made by his mother:

Square by square by square,

She punched anger through our skin

And turned us into quilts.

Wrapped around our mom,

We quilts absorbed her anger

And her fear and pain

Wrapped around our mom,

We quilts absorbed her courage

And her love and grace. (219)

Form the context of the book, one may assume that quilting is a coping mechanism through which Alexie’s mother deals with her grief. Subsequently, by identifying with the quilt made by his mother, Alexie becomes the product of her grief. Furthermore, the poet seems to suggest that the positive emotions and behavioural tendencies transmit

26 themselves in a similar way as the negative ones. Regarding this notion, one may imply that the survivor’s child complex may along with traumatization transmit also the notion of survivance. Consequently, the overprotectiveness, which is another characteristic of the complex, may be witnessed in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian when Junior’s father leave the family on the Christmas day for one of his drinking binges. Junior feels enraged but he suppresses his feeling in order to comfort his father’s remorse; Junior states, “For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of a man who had broken my heart yet again” (Alexie, ATD 151). Earlier in the book Junior expresses the transgenerational element of the complex and acknowledges that the poor parenting skills of his parents are product of historical oppression and disenfranchised grief legacy: “They [Junior’s parents] dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams”

(Alexie, ATD 11). As mentioned in the previous chapter, some transgenerational theoreticians ascribe the disruption of natural Native American familial bonds predominantly to boarding school practices and the way in which were Native

American children extracted from nurturing environment of their families, therefore, prevented from the acquisition of natural parenting skills.

Furthermore, the impact of colonial assimilative practices of the boarding school era gave rise to the phenomenon of internalized oppression within Native American communities and families. American Indian children who were educated in boarding schools were very often subjected to physical and sexual abuse as well as mental degradation committed not only by white staff members but also by the fellow members of Indian ethnic group who were former attendees of these institutions (Haag 158). The victims were likely to identify with the aggressor on the psychological level and later in

27 their life exhibit the same oppressive behaviours contributing to the never-ending cycle of abuse. Alexie addresses the issue in the following notion:

As an adult, I can look back at the violence on my reservation and logically trace

it back to the horrific degradations, sexual and otherwise, committed against my

tribe by generations of white American priests, nuns, soldiers, teachers,

missionaries, and government officials. The abused can become abusers. It’s a

tragic progression. (YDH 19-20)

The phenomenon of internalized oppression contributes to the layering of traumatic experiences. As the statistical data mentioned in the previous chapter imply, some of the most significant disparities between U.S. white population and Native Americans concern homicide and suicide rate. Junior experiences the traumatic layering when his father’s friend Eugene gets killed by another tribesman. Consequently, Eugene’s killer hangs himself in a prison cell; Junior notes, “We didn’t even have enough time to forgive him” (Alexie, ATD 171). At the moment when Eugene’s death takes place,

Junior still mourns the loss of his grandmother and faces an identity crisis caused by his transfer to Reardan. The layering of the traumatization occurs on the individual, familial and communal level and consists of historical as well as present losses. Alexie addresses this theme in his memoir, he describes the traumatic layering as “one-ever growing grief” which is ceaselessly reexperienced with every new loss (YDH 292).

The final part of the analysis focuses on the role of alcohol in selected Alexie’s works and how substance abuse afflicting Native American communities contributes to the perpetuation of trauma. The self-destructive tendencies which originate in disenfranchised grief and deep cultural shame often manifest themselves through alcohol and drug abuse which allows the traumatized individuals, at least momentarily,

28 escape their suffering. Sadly, alcohol consumption causes further harm to already grief- stricken community. Due to his father’s addiction Alexie experienced the destructive power of alcohol at first hand, he writes, “My father died of alcoholism, a slow suicide”

(YDH 518). Being himself recovered alcoholic, Alexie has little contempt for this vice and pillories “the bottle-blind” recklessness which turns hazard into “fun” (Alexie, YDH

15). In other words, alcohol debilitates peoples’ capacity to think rationally, instead, it encourages them to act rashly. As previously mentioned, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior experiences three deaths and every single one of them is fuelled by alcohol. Junior’s grandmother is run over by a drunken driver (Alexie, ATD

157), his sister dies in a trailer fire while being drunk to a point of unconsciousness

(Alexie, ATD 205), and Eugene is shot dead in an alcohol-fuelled dispute over the last sip of wine (Alexie, ATD 169). This summation depicts the involvement of alcohol abuse in production of present loss experienced by Native Americans and attributes to further traumatization of American Indian communities. Junior estimates that “[a]bout

90 percent of the deaths [which he has experienced over his life] have been because of alcohol” and concludes, “all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reason: the fricking booze” (Alexie, ATD 200).

4. Conclusion

The transgenerational trauma theory is a psychoanalytical device that has been proposed by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart in order to explain health and welfare discrepancies between U.S. white population and Native American ethnic group. The theory strives to bring to prominence historically conditioned patterns of self- destructive and abusive behaviours that, often unconsciously, operate in Native

American communities across generations. The theory proposes that the traumatization of contemporary Native Americans reaches as far into history as the first contact between Europeans and American indigenous people, moreover, it is perpetuated by present-day losses of relatives or otherwise related members of the community. This work uses the theoretical framework of Brave Heart’s concept for purposes of literary criticism.

The first chapter introduces the Native American writer, poet, and comedian

Sherman Alexie. The brief summaries of the selected works (You Don’t Have to Say

You Love Me: a Memoir, The Absolutely True Diary of a Pert-Time Indian), as well as the evaluation concerning their non-fictionality, are also part of the chapter. The second chapter provides the conceptualization of the transgenerational trauma theory.

The third chapter analyses the selected writings using the delineated conceptualization. The analysis confirms the presence of transgenerational trauma patterns within the context of the selected writings as well as its negative impact on the past and contemporary generations of Native Americans. The disenfranchised grief manifests itself in Alexie’s writings in associations with past as well as present traumatization. In other words, Alexie’s characters experience unresolved grief originating from the disregard of white Americans towards the Native American

Holocaust and post-colonial assimilative actions while at the same time face the

30 contemporary oppression and stereotyping which dismisses their present-day problems and losses. Furthermore, the present and the past traumatization incessantly reassert each other. That is to say, the historically and socially conditioned expectations associated with Native Americans, whether by white U.S. population or by Native

Americans themselves, present rigid mental limitations of proper whiteness or authentic

Indianness. Alexie’s juxtaposition between white and Native American cultures helps to illuminate this phenomenon as his own Native American ethnic identity is often discredited by both groups based on the fact that his status of accomplished and famous

Native American writer is in direct contradiction with aforementioned mental limitations. Simultaneously, Alexie proposes that the redemptive power resides in an individual agency as opposed to cultural predetermination. The rest of the analysis focuses on the survivor’s child complex and transmission of trauma across generations.

The excerpts from Alexie’s books document the way in which the disruption of familial bonds instigates the self-destructive and abusive behaviours in Native American communities, thus, causes further traumatization. Finally, the role of alcohol is taken into consideration. Alexie supports Brave Heart’s notion regarding the damaging effect that alcohol has on the community. Furthermore, he depicts alcohol abuse as a central cause of contemporary loss experienced by Native Americans.

In conclusion, Alexie’s works seem to possess valuable testimony in the context of transgenerational trauma discourse. Concurrently, to understand the patterns of transgenerational traumatization and mechanism of its perpetuation, especially, the way in which stereotyping may limit one’s purviews, is unquestionably beneficial for interpretation of Alexie’s writings.

5. Works cited

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no. 4, 2005, pp. 149–169. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029639.

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---. The Business of Fancydancing. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hanging Loose Press, 1992.

---. “THE CARNEGIE SHORTLIST Interviews: SHERMAN ALEXIE.” Booklist, vol.

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Berglund, Jeff. “Imagination Turns Every Word into a Bottle Rocket.” Roush and

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Fleming, Walter C. “Myths and Stereotypes about Native Americans.” The Phi Delta

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43, no. 1, 2007, p. 149-168. digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/tlr/vol43/iss1/8.

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6. Abstract

This thesis focuses on the presence of transgenerational trauma in works of

Native American author Sherman Alexie, namely The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-

Time Indian and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: a Memoir and ways in which historical trauma perpetuates itself across generations in Native American communities.

Close attention is paid to the concept of disenfranchised grief and its intercultural social implications such as stereotyping and internalized oppression.

The first chapter introduces Sherman Alexie and contextualizes him among his literary peers and predecessors. It also presents the selected writings and differentiates the Native American autobiographical style form the European one. The second chapter uses secondary sources to introduce the transgenerational trauma theory. The framework is based on the research of Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart and enhanced by relevant insights of other theoreticians. The third chapter carries out the analysis of the selected writings using the concepts of transgenerational trauma theory. The final chapter summarizes the findings of the analysis.

7. Resumé

Tato deskriptivně-analytická práce se zabývá mezigeneračním přenosem traumatu v dílech současného indiánského autora Shermana Alexieho. Zvláštní pozornost je věnována zejména fenoménu společensky zneuznaného smutku (z ang. disenfranchised grief) a jeho sociálním implikacím, kterými jsou například utváření a upevňování stereotypů nebo vznik internalizovaného útlaku (z ang. internalized oppression), odcizujícím většinovou americkou kulturu od té indiánské, čímž dochází k další traumatizaci indiánských komunit.

První kapitola je věnována osobě Shermana Alexieho a jeho začlenění v rámci americké indiánské literatury. Tato kapitola rovněž stručně popisuje analyzovaná díla a odlišnosti v autobiografickém stylu pramenící z indiánské literární a orální tradice.

Druhá kapitola uvádí teorii transgeneračního přenosu traumatu. Hlavní struktura je přímo odvozena od konceptu docentky Marie Yellow Horse Brave Heartové, přičemž je dále obohacena o relevantní podněty několika dalších odborníků. Třetí kapitola analyzuje vybraná díla Shermana Alexieho skrze aplikaci konceptů teorie transgeneračního přenosu traumatu. Závěr práce shrnuje výsledky analýzy.