Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 154) - Jonathan Penner (review date 9 July 2000)

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Jonathan Penner (review date 9 July 2000)

SOURCE: Penner, Jonathan. “Full Blooded.” Washington Post Book World (9 July 2000): 7.

[In the following review, Penner comments on Alexie's exploration of the struggle for American-Indian cultural identity as experienced by the characters in The Toughest Indian in the World.]

The protagonists of these nine stories [in The Toughest Indian in the World] are all proud to be Indians but hardly comfortable, or even quite sure what it means. “What is an Indian?” is a question asked over and over, either implicitly or in just those words.

What indeed? These aren't Hemingway's Indians, drunks freezing to death at the roadside. Sherman Alexie's Spokanes and Coeur d'Alenes, uncomfortably half-assimilated, tend to be fiercely intellectual (one insists that cars deserve love—specifically, agape) and as witty as stand-up comics. At the same time, they long to be warriors, comparing...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Leslie Ullman (review date summer 1993)
   2. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 18 June 1995)
   3. Denise Low (review date winter 1996)
   4. Jennifer Gillan (essay date March 1996)
   5. Lee Lemon (review date Spring 1996)
   6. Howard Meredith (review date Spring 1996)
   7. Sherman Alexie and Doug Marx (interview date 16 September 1996)
   8. Madison Smart Bell (review date 17 November 1996)
   9. Sherman Alexie and Erik Himmelsbach (interview date 17 December 1996)
   10. Judith Bolton-Fasman (review date 6 January 1997)
   11. Robert L. Berner (review date spring 1997)
   12. Peter Donahue (essay date Spring 1997)
   13. Ron McFarland (essay date Spring 1997)
   14. Sherman Alexie and John Purdy (interview date 4 October 1997)
   15. Michael Gorra (review date 5 March 1998)
   16. Sherman Alexie and Dennis West and Joan M. West (interview date fall 1998)
   17. Dan Georgakas (review date fall 1998)
   18. Jonathan Levi (review date 18 June 2000)
   19. Jonathan Penner (review date 9 July 2000)
   20. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 20 July 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Sherman Alexie