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Frank Allen (review date 15 November 1993)

SOURCE: A review of First Indian on the Moon, in Library Journal, Vol. 118, No. 19, November 15, 1993, pp. 77-8.

[In the following review, Allen discusses cultural and personal influences on Alexie's verse in First Indian on the Moon.]

Outraged pride, broken promises, and the scourge of alcoholism are the burden of [First Indian on the Moon's] sharp-edged, high-impact poems, prose poems, mini-essays, and fragments of stories woven together in a tapestry of pain about death by fire and survival by endurance on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Memories of great Indian chiefs, "fancydancers," powwow campfires, and "some Crazy Horse dreams," set against cruelty toward Native Americans, reveal "what went wrong with our love." Caught between alien white and disintegrated Native American cultures, "home-less and hopeful," Alexie uses the "magic and loss" of song and story to forge an...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Alex Kuo (essay date 1992)
   2. Publishers Weekly (review date 1 February 1993)
   3. The New Yorker (essay date 10 May 1993)
   4. Sybil S. Steinberg (review date 19 July 1993)
   5. Andrea-Bess Baxter (review date August 1993)
   6. Brian Schneider (review date Fall 1993)
   7. Reynolds Price (review date 17 October 1993)
   8. Anne Goodwin Sides (review date 17 October 1993)
   9. Publishers Weekly (review date 8 November 1993)
   10. Frank Allen (review date 15 November 1993)
   11. Joseph Bruchac (review date Winter 1994)
   12. Alan R. Velie (review date Spring 1994)
   13. James Beschta (review date May 1994)
   14. Carl L. Bankston III (review date May-June 1994)
   15. Andrea-Bess Baxter (review date November 1994)
   16. Leslie Marmon Silko (review date 12 June 1995)
   17. Frederick Busch (review date 16 July 1995)
   18. Abigail Davis (review date July-August 1995)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright

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