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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. ‘Breaking and Entering’: Sherman Alexie’s Urban Indian Literature Tom Farrington PhD English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2015 2 Declaration This is to certify that the work contained within has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. An earlier version of chapter one was published in the Journal of American Studies, 47.2, May 2013, as ‘The Ghost Dance and the Politics of Exclusion in Sherman Alexie’s “Distances.”’ I certify that I have obtained permission from the publisher, Cambridge University Press, to reproduce parts or all of this publication here. Signed: --------------------------------------- Tom Farrington 3 Thesis Abstract This thesis reads the fiction and poetry of Spokane/Coeur d’Alene writer Sherman Alexie as predominantly urban Indian literature. The primary experience of the growing majority of American Indians in the twenty-first century consists in the various threats and opportunities presented by urban living, yet contemporary criticism of literature by (and about) American Indians continues to focus on the representations of life for those tribally enrolled American Indians living on reservations, under the jurisdiction of tribal governments. This thesis provides critical responses to Alexie’s contemporary literary representations of those Indians living apart from tribal lands and the communities and traditions contained therein. I argue that Alexie’s multifaceted representations of Indians in the city establish intelligible urban voices that speak across tribal boundaries to those urban Indians variously engaged in creating diverse Indian communities, initiating new urban traditions, and adapting to the anonymities and visibilities that characterise city living. The thesis takes a broadly linear chronological structure, beginning with Alexie’s first published collection of short stories and concluding with his most recent works. Each chapter isolates for examination a distinct aspect of Alexie’s urban Indian literature, so demonstrating a potential new critical methodology for reading urban Indian literatures. I open with a short piece explaining my position as a white, British scholar of the heavily politicised field of American Indian literary studies, before the introductory chapter positions Alexie in the wider body of Indian literatures and establishes the historical grounds for the aims and claims of my 4 research. Chapter one is primarily concerned with the short story ‘Distances’, from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), and the Ghost Dance religion of the late nineteenth century, reading Alexie’s representations of this phenomenon as explorations of the historical and political tensions that divide those Indians living on tribal lands and those living in cities. Chapter two discusses the difficulties of maintaining a tribal identity when negotiating this divide towards the city, analysing the politics of indigenous artistic expression and reception in Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues (1995). Alexie’s second novel, Indian Killer (1996), signals the relocation of his literary aesthetics to the city streets, and chapter three detects and unravels the anti-essentialist impulse in Alexie’s (mis)use of the distinctly urban mystery thriller genre. Grief, death and ritual are explored in chapter four, which focusses on selected stories from Ten Little Indians (2003), and explains Alexie’s characters’ need for new, urban traditions with reference to an ethics of grieving. Chapter five connects the politics of time travel to the representation of trauma in Flight (2007), and addresses Alexie’s representations of violence in Ten Little Indians and The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), proposing that it is the structural violences of daily life, rather than the murder and beatings found throughout his work, that leave lasting impressions on urban Indian subjectivities. My conclusion brings together my approaches to Alexie’s urban Indian literature, and suggests further areas for research. 5 Acknowledgements Überthanks to Dr Kenneth ‘Ken’ Millard for being a top-drawer supervisor, an actual real-life inspiration, and a most excellent dude. This thesis exists because you believed in it. Now, isn’t that sweet? Thanks to M & FD, Denise and Julian, and Mr & Mrs Farrington. You are the most important people in the world to me. Maximum respect to those who saw me at my maddest and didn’t make a fuss: Andrew Morgan, Angus Roberts, Apostrophe, Cameron Foster, Caroline Cloughley, Dominic Rimmer, Gareth Gordon, Gavin Coull, James Daly, Kelly Smith, Maria Squires, Morwenna Kearsley, Neil Squires, Nicky Lawrence, Rosamund West, Oscar Winner Tom Bryant, and Tom Dumbleton. You made me feel good and normal. It would take a lifetime to explain why Morvern Cunningham and Rabiya Choudhry deserve all the gifts in the world. I’ll start tomorrow. Scholarly recognition and thanks to Dr Linden Bicket, Linda Grieve, Dr Michelle Keown, Professor Scott Lucas, Dr Martin Padget, and the anonymous readers at the Journal of American Studies for their time and insightful comments on a previous version of chapter one, which was published as ‘The Ghost Dance and the Politics of Exclusion in Sherman Alexie’s “Distances”’ in Volume 47, Issue 02, in May 2013. Thanks to Cambridge University Press for granting permission to reprint that article in a modified form here. And thanks for reading this, you. 6 Dedication: To Joan and Jim Baverstock, who would probably disapprove of such frivolous sentimentality. 7 Disclaimer ‘When I was a boy, a friend and I used to keep pet crows.’ - Louis Owens, Mixedblood Messages, xi. ‘Where I grew up there wasn’t much around except books and trees.’ - David Treuer, Native American Fiction, 8. ‘As an Indian scholar in graduate school...’ - Sean Teuton, ‘Writing American Indian Politics’. ‘Way back in June 2002 Craig Womack invited me to participate...’ - Janice Acoose, ‘Honoring Ni’Wahkomakanak’. ‘I look out my window now on this land, as it begins to turn...’ - Lisa Brooks, ‘Locating an Ethical, Native Criticism. (Teuton, Acoose, and Brooks, all from Reasoning Together). ‘I am always leery of a critical essay that begins with a personal anecdote. Typically, such forays into the personal lives of the author are thinly veiled moments of self-indulgence. And while I am certainly not going to claim that this essay is any exception, I have decided to throw caution to the wind and ask for the forbearance of the reader as I trace a very brief history of how I arrived at the work of...’ - Dean Rader, ‘I Don’t Speak Navajo: Esther G. Belin’s In the Belly of My Beauty.’ ‘There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.’ - Charles Kinbote, Pale Fire. In recent years it has become somewhat traditional for the critic of Indian literatures1 to provide informal autobiographical reflections on their path towards this or that publication, in order to indicate their personal investment in the act of literary criticism. Such reflections often begin with the acknowledgement of a tribal affiliation or an Indian relative, which leads into a recollection of the moment at which he or she was inspired to take seriously the study of Indian literatures, before the final paragraph contextualises the composition of this particular piece by noting some pertinent aspect of the critic’s physical surroundings. The perceived need for 1 See the ‘Terminology’ section for a note on what is meant here by ‘Indian’ and ‘Indian literatures’. 8 these disclaimers is certainly indicative of the political sensitivity with which one is expected to approach Indian literatures, whilst at the same time hinting at the preference that the reader may or may not feel towards a critic immediately positioned (or not positioned) as a cultural insider. My introduction responds more fully to these problems of reading, but for now, in the interests of keeping tradition alive, it seems appropriate that before I begin examining (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) Sherman Alexie’s representations of self and other, I offer my self, as other. I am a white, British male. I was born in Hull, England in 1982 and moved to Dunblane, Scotland when I was four years old. I have no tribal affiliations nor any Indian relatives, though I did meet two individuals who identified themselves as Indian: one at a youth hostel in Berlin, Germany, and one at a birds of prey centre in Biggleswade, England. We didn’t talk about tribes or literature. We did talk about the city and owls, respectively, but not as they appear in, say, Indian Killer (1996). I first began to take seriously the study of Indian literatures when I read Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) as part of Dr Kenneth Millard’s ‘Contemporary American Fiction’ class in 2004, during my final year as an undergraduate studying English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. I believe I wrote about the aforementioned collection’s ‘community’ of stories in an exam, though I can’t fully recall. My copy of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was purchased for me, by a friend, at one of Alexie’s book readings.