Reposted on H-Amerindian, a listserv for academics working on Native American issues.
"Native Author is a Man of Many Tribes; Terrorist Attacks of 9/11 Led Writer Sherman Alexie to Abandon the Negative Aspects of Tribalism," Sarah T. Williams, Ottawa Citizen, September 13, 2007. Copyright 2007 Ottawa Citizen, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publication Inc. All Rights Reserved.
"In his first work of fiction for young adults, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the Seattle poet, novelist, humourist, screenwriter and master of the short story, has created an endearing teen protagonist in his own likeness and placed him in the here and now: Arnold 'Junior' Spirit, 14, is a poor kid on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Because of the hydrocephalus, Junior suffers frequent seizures and fevers, has extra teeth, a stutter, a lisp and lopsided vision corrected with government-issued black plastic glasses that make him look like an Indian grandpa. All of this, of course, incites the Darwinian brutality of his peers, who beat him and berate him with taunts of 'hydro head' and 'retard.' He also has loving, if flawed, parents. This much is true about Alexie's own life. And so, too, is the life-altering decision Junior ultimately makes to go to school in nearby Reardan, where he will be 'the only Indian except for the mascot.' Like the character he created, Alexie dreamed of a better life. His decision at age 14 to attend school off the reservation 'was huge ... epic,' he said during a recent interview at his writer's studio in Seattle. 'It was only 22 miles, geographically. But I might as well have been Lewis and Clark for the journey it took.' He was departing a 'monoculture,' he said, 'where everybody in the sixth grade was related, including the teacher,' and heading into 'an anti-Indian town' with a school full of academic and athletic overachievers. Looking back, Alexie, now 40 and the father of two boys, marvels that his parents -- mom, a quiltmaker, and dad, 'a randomly employed, blue-collar alcoholic' -- gave their permission. Absolutely True Diary comes right on the heels of Flight (Black Cat/Grove), a novel for adults whose narrator is an abandoned, biracial teen (his Irish mother dies of cancer; his Indian dad disappeared when he was born). 'Call me Zits,' he says in the book's Melvillian opening line. Zits, who suffers from a lethal combination of rage, shame and loneliness, is lured into a plot to shoot people at random in a bank lobby. Instead, he's time-whisked into the bodies and minds of people who make up his history and the history of humankind -- an FBI agent at Pine Ridge, an Indian boy at Wounded Knee, a pilot betrayed by the terrorist whom he befriended and taught to fly. Expanded notions of tribalism, sympathetic biracial characters and empathic excursions into the minds of both victims and victimizers? Is this the same Sherman Alexie who wrote Indian Killer (1996), a novel that simmers with race-based rage? The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 'changed me tremendously,' Alexie said. 'I saw the end game of tribalism -- it ends up with people flying planes into buildings. I've worked hard since then to shed the negative parts of tribal thinking, which almost always involve some sort of fear,' the starting point for violence, he said…"
At about the same time as this story was posted, another member of the list (white) contacted me “back channel” to complain about “re-enacters,” people who dress up as 19th century fur trappers, cavalrymen and Indians. They spend enormous amounts of money and accumulate mountains of factoids in an effort to channel what basically amounts to the American Genocide as the prairies were cleared for white re-settlement. Most of them are men, though there are even organizations for women, and a few get into the whole game so deeply that they actually claim they have “become” someone from the past -- usually someone of great prestige and personal prowess like a warrior.
So the theme continues to be “identity.” The literary news of the week was that James Frey, condemned by all and Oprah for embellishing his faultiness in a tell-all memoir, has now written a work of “fiction” which hints at what the reality might be. It’s not one or the other that fascinates us, so much as the dance back and forth over the boundary, wherever the heck it is.
At Pamida, my nearby “country” big box store, I picked up a copy of “Only Child” by Andrew Vachss who writes about sordid mysteries involving child abuse. VERY popular, though by now this novel was selling for $5, less than some women’s magazines. The source of a murder turned out to be a videographer who began taping scripted scenes, then went to taping scenes in which some were actors and others thought they were in reality, and finally ended with a snuff film that was the real thing. Mainstream TV, of course, has been pushing reality shows and finally ran into the law with a show about kids left alone in a ghost town to manage themselves which is now legally challenged for endangering, abusing and exploiting the kids, all under fourteen.
And another back channel email described a small town family, seemingly admirable, that just exploded in murder and arson. These people were fellow church members. How does one know what is reliable, who is “safe?” What does one do when they are suddenly made unreal and dangerous? It’s a tiny 9/11 event.
We seem to be in deep confusion over identity, principles of constructive society, how to be safe -- all inter-locking and asking unanswerable questions. Many people interpret this as showing we are approaching apocalypse, in a terminal decline. When taking into account the environmental distress, this is persuasive. But I doubt it. I think it’s a transition. Transitions, if you remember your adolescence, are always awful: near-insanity, risk, sometimes violence, certainly experiment -- if only on a small internal scale. But time pushes us on out the other side into something approximating maturity. (Some people just get older.) What that might be for our world is open to questions. We ought to address ourselves to thinking about just what those questions might be. And not just in a presidential election, either. Not just to find out what will sell.
It’s a time for generating options. Follow Sherman Alexie. He's not afraid. Call him "leader."
No comments:
Post a Comment