Sherman Alexie

Abstract

Sherman Alexie is the reigning “world heavyweight poetry bout champion” in the second generation of a Native American literary renaissance begun in the 1960s. His popular persona as a comedian, poetry bout heavyweight, experimental writer, filmmaker, and social pundit has itself become a work of art. He shares with many American Indian writers a central motif reaffirming Native lives and Native nationhood, although his direct comedic style and ironic attitude set him apart from the earnest lyricism of the now canonized elder Native writers such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Louise Erdrich, and from many of his peers. Unlike many, Alexie rarely points toward the redemptive power of Native community as a direction for his protagonists' struggles. Instead, his bold, sometimes campy, style tends to affirm a more individual agency unique to Native identities, by a distinct artistic pattern of personal affirmation and reconnection. One reviewer marks an ironic balance, writing that Alexie's “dry sincerity leavens the sentiment” of his Indian tales. For all his humor, indeed in the heart of his humor, Alexie invariably circulates the grave themes of ongoing colonial history and its personal effects in Indian country. As 118-year-old Etta explains in his short story “Dear John Wayne,” “Having fun is very serious.”