Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 154) - Madison Smart Bell (review date 17 November 1996)

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Madison Smart Bell (review date 17 November 1996)

SOURCE: Bell, Madison Smart. “Native Son: Sherman Alexie Explores the Confusion and Anger Born of Oppression.” Chicago Tribune Books (17 November 1996): sec. 14, p. 3.

[In the following review, Bell explores the rage experienced by the Native-American characters due to the loss of their cultural identity in Indian Killer.]

Over the course of writing several novels, Sherman Alexie has evolved a style that might be called modern Indian magical realism: a melange that combines grindingly realistic portrayals of reservation life today with swift and deft satirical sketches of the rest of modern American society, connected by natural and supernatural events and interpenetrated with episodes from the one-sided, 19th Century struggle between embattled Indian tribes and the encroaching white people. At his best, Alexie can integrate all these disparate ingredients into some fascinating, and...

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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