CRITICAL CRITICAL INSIGHTS Lewis Sherman Alexie INSIGHTS Edited by Leon Lewis, Professor of Film and Literature at Appalachian State University Leon Lewis is the author of Henry Miller: The Major Writings (1985) and Eccentric Individuality in William Kotzwinkle’s “The Fan Man,” “E.T.,” “Doctor Rat,” and Other Works of Fantasy and Fiction Sherman Alexie (2002), editor of Robert M. Young: Essays on the Films (2005), and translator of Gilbert Michlin’s memoir Of No Interest to the Nation: A Jewish Family in France, 1925-1945 (2004). Edited by Leon Lewis Among the essays in this volume: “The Paris Review Perspective,” by Barry Harbaugh “Postmodern Magic, Traditional Rage: The Critical Reception of Sherman Alexie’s Work,” by Tammy Wahpeconiah “Sex and Salmon: Queer Identities in Sherman Alexie’s The Toughest Indian in the World,” by Lisa Tatonetti For information about online access to this print book, contact Salem Press’s Customer Service and Sales Department at [email protected] or by telephone at (800) 221-1592. SALEM PRESS CRITICAL INSIGHTS Sherman Alexie CRITICAL INSIGHTS Sherman Alexie Editor Leon Lewis Appalachian State University Salem Press Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey Cover photo: ©Erin Patrice O'Brien/CORBIS Outline Copyright © 2012 by Salem Press, a Division of EBSCO Publishing, Inc. Editor’s text © 2012 by Leon Lewis “The Paris Review Perspective” © 2012 by Barry Harbaugh for The Paris Review All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or re- produced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any in- formation storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical ar- ticles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, at [email protected]. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48- 1992 (R1997). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sherman Alexie / Editor, Leon Lewis. p. cm. -- (Critical insights) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58765-821-1 (set : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-58765-822-8 (set-pack A : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-58765-823-5 (vol. 1 : alk. paper) 1. Alexie, Sherman, 1966---Criticism and interpretation. I. Lewis, Leon. PS3551.L35774Z85 2012 818'.5409--dc23 2011018805 printed in canada Contents About This Volume, Leon Lewis vii Career, Life, and Influence On Sherman Alexie: American Man of Letters, Leon Lewis 3 Biography of Sherman Alexie, Georgie L. Donovan 20 The Paris Review Perspective, Barry Harbaugh for The Paris Review 30 Critical Contexts Navigating the River of the World: Collective Trauma in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Tammy Wahpeconiah 35 “Doesn’t everybody belong to a subculture?” Community and History in Sherman Alexie’s Writing, Michael Wilson 53 Articulations of Difference: Minority Existence in White America in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Constance Bracewell 70 Postmodern Magic, Traditional Rage: The Critical Reception of Sherman Alexie’s Work, Tammy Wahpeconiah 87 Half Child/Half Adult: Sherman Alexie’s Hybrid Young Adult Fiction, Mark Vogel 106 The Rhetorical, Performative Poetics of Sherman Alexie: Critical Reflections on Affect, Memory, and Subjectivity, Cindy M. Spurlock 126 A Rez Kid Gone Urban: Sherman Alexie’s Recent Short Fiction, Richard Sax 143 Critical Readings Dialectic to Dialogic: Negotiating Bicultural Heritage in Sherman Alexie’s Sonnets, Carrie Etter 161 Sherman Alexie’s Indigenous Blues, Douglas Ford 169 The Exaggeration of Despair in Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues, Gloria Bird 189 Contents v Reservation Home Movies: Sherman Alexie’s Poetry, Jennifer Gillan 202 A New Road and a Dead End in Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues, Scott Andrews 225 “The res has missed you”: The Fragmented Reservation of the Mind in The Business of Fancydancing, Meredith K. James 243 A Bridge of Difference: Sherman Alexie and the Politics of Mourning, Laura Arnold Leibman 251 A World of Story-Smoke: A Conversation with Sherman Alexie, Åse Nygren 275 Indian Killer, Daniel Grassian 297 Sex and Salmon: Queer Identities in Sherman Alexie’s The Toughest Indian in the World, Lisa Tatonetti 318 The Trans/historicity of Trauma in Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash and Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, Nancy Van Styvendale 340 Building Cultural Knowledge in the Contemporary Native Novel, Sean Kicummah Teuton 370 Sherman Alexie: Interview, Margo Rabb 394 Resources Chronology of Sherman Alexie’s Life 407 Works by Sherman Alexie 410 Bibliography 411 About the Editor 415 About The Paris Review 415 Contributors 417 Acknowledgments 422 Index 425 vi Critical Insights Articulations of Difference: Minority Existence in White America in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Constance Bracewell The psychological and emotional pain experienced by survivors of disasters such as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 or Hurricane Katrina in 2005 often fill the pages of American newspapers and magazines. The resultant stories and images of ordinary citizens who are directly affected by such di- sasters inevitably compel an outpouring of social responsibility in ac- tion on the part of others. This can be readily seen in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, when literally tens of thousands of ordi- nary American citizens took part in volunteer missions in the disaster zone, helping to rebuild homes and jump-start the revitalization of communities indiscriminately demolished by winds and devastating flood waters. Within these stories and images, citizens of all racial and social makeups stand shoulder to shoulder, working together to effect positive changes for the residents of particular communities, survivors of extreme human disaster. It seems at times like these that many ordi- nary Americans take a step back and reflect on the certain realization that they too could one day wrestle with just such a devastating human event. Yet, for every heartwarming story of Americans from all back- grounds tirelessly working together for the common good, there are also countless stories without such happy endings, stories that are predicated on the persistent tendency of American society to divide along racial lines. In actuality, Americans have a long history of racial discord and social separation along ethnic lines, a very different sort of human disaster that belies feel-good stories of ordinary people of all racial and social classes coming together in an orderly camaraderie of human spirit. Historically, vast numbers of Americans of nonwhite 70 Critical Insights backgrounds have instead lived the ugly side of the American experi- ence—that of racial discord and social standards of human value and beauty that often demand “white” characteristics, both of the physical body and of the inner person. Contemporary ethnic American writers of fiction often explore this aspect of the American experience. This premise—that ethnic Americans must somehow live up to arbitrary physical and behavioral standards deemed common to white Ameri- cans—is central to the plot of Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer (1996). Novels such as Indian Killer and Nobel Prize-winning African Ameri- can author Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) map out the psycho- logical, emotional, and experiential pain of being “different” in an American society that is dominated by white standards of human worth. At first glance, Alexie’s Indian Killer and Morrison’s The Blu- est Eye would seem quite dissimilar; however, when read in con- junction the two novels reveal an extraordinary level of similarity in how the authors explore what it means to be “different” in a white- dominated world. One of the more immediately noticeable similarities between the two novels can be found in the way each book emphasizes physical standards of human worth and the symbolic implications of having blue eyes, particularly if the blue eyes in question appear in the face of a brown-skinned person. In Alexie’s Indian Killer the “blue, blue eyes” (76) of protagonist John Smith’s adoptive mother, Olivia, are in contrast to the “startling blue eyes” (90) of half-white, half-Spokane Indian Reggie Polatkin. Olivia Smith is presented as a kind, well- intentioned woman who, despite her many unintended blunders in raising her adoptive Native American son, is nevertheless a fine figure of white American upper-middle-class womanhood. Well educated, open-minded, and open to love, Olivia appears to in some way deserve to have the blue, blue eyes and clear, beautiful, pale skin that are the mark of white America at its collective best. In contrast is Reggie Polatkin, the product of a painfully mismatched union between a Spo- kane mother and a brutally racist white father named Bird Lawrence. Minority Existence in White America 71 Bird himself evidences some of the worst qualities of that segment of white America that deems persons of brown skin color and non- English-speaking ethnicity inherently inferior and undeserving of ba- sic human consideration. In Bird’s estimation, his son’s brown skin marks his Indianness and renders him unworthy of human value—or, to put it another way, Bird views his son as an ugly physical manifesta- tion of the utter inferiority of brown-skinned people in comparison to their white-skinned counterparts. Bird flays Reggie’s very existence on a sadistically regular basis, demanding that he somehow eliminate his physical and inner Indian- ness in order to be more like Bird himself. The father brutally con- fronts his son through countless challenges to Reggie’s desire to be somehow more than an Indian, such as when he demands that Reggie answer whether he wants to be a “dirty” or “hostile” Indian all of his life.