Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservations in Washington. His background is important in understanding his poem, “Crow Testament.” In this poem, Alexie uses foreshadowing,...

In “Indian Education,” Alexie presents the hypocrisy of education on reservations in the United States. The story is told through the eyes of Victor, a Native youth who attends school on the...

In the essay "Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie, the author, a Native American from the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington, writes that he learned to read by reading a Superman...

A first step to answering a question like this is to look at the title of the story. Titles offer clues as to what a narrative is about, and hence what purpose the author has in writing it. Titles...

A critical appreciation of a poem is a critical (close) reading of a poem. It does not mean to criticize the poem. Rather, a critical appreciation will examine a poem's meaning, themes, mood, tone,...

Sherman Alexie recounts a story of when he was a young boy, before he understood writing and the structure of an essay. He was examining one of his father's books and saw the delineations that...

This line means that both Indians on the reservation and the wealthier whites in the farm town where Alexie attends school in eighth grade are devoid of comfort and are suffering in many ways....

Sherman Alexie’s principal claim in “Superman and Me” is that reading books saved his life and that he is now trying to use books to save the lives of other Indian children along with his own. This...

In the context of Sherman Alexie's work, this line is a reference to the continued suffering of the Native American or Indian people, to whom almost everything seems to have the capacity to become...

In her work on Native American Writers, Susan Brill describes Alexie Sherman's writing as a mix of ...pain and humor, hunger and survival, love and anger, broken treaties Manifest Destiny,...

Sherman Alexie's essay "Superman and Me" is primarily written in the narrative style. The narrative style of writing is used to tell a story. Sherman Alexie is a self-proclaimed storyteller. In an...

There is some humor in “Indian Education” when the speaker describes his experiences in school as a child. For example, he says that his Indian name was Junior Falls Down. Sometimes it was Bloody...

Sherman Alexie is a Native American writer from the Spokane, Washington area. He had some challenges as a child that kept him from taking part in some traditional kids' activities, like sports. One...

Sherman Alexie is a well-known American Indian author, poet, and filmmaker. While it's unclear which of his essays you are referring to here, he does mention the significance of hair in many of his...

Sherman Alexie depicts the relationship between Native Americans and white Americans as tentative at best and frequently distrustful and even hostile. Both sides often appear to have preconceived...

Generally, it's not a bad idea to go into every piece of literature, especially those written in first-person point-of-view, with the belief that the narrator is unreliable. Since Sherman Alexie's...

Throughout the story "Indian Education," there is only one mention of the narrator's cousin, Steven Ford, but the idea of this character is present throughout the narrative. When in fifth grade,...

In a particularly ironic passage in "Indian Education" Alexie remembers the "sweet, almost innocent choices" that Indian boys were forced to make, such as that between sniffing glue or playing...

When discussing style, I find the most useful literary elements you must look at are the following: point-of-view, narrative presence, diction, and figurative language. In "Every Little Hurricane,"...

In Sherman Alexie's touching essay "Superman And Me," the writer discusses the idea of the "smart Indian." The essay revolves around Alexie's perception that people expected him and other members...

At eNotes we can't answer your homework questions for you, but I will try and offer some ideas which will hopefully help you complete the task for yourself. One key image in the poem is from the...

Superman and Me is an autobiographical indictment of the moral and intellectual destruction inflicted on the Native American population by European interlopers. Sherman Alexie doesn’t come right...

In Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education," bigotry and prejudice by whites and others clash against Native Americans and their values. I use the term Native Americans for lack of a better term....

The poem "Tourists" by Sherman Alexie is in three sections. In the poem, Alexie imagines that various deceased celebrities enter an Indian reservation at different times. He uses them as examples...

This is the story of William, a Spokane Indian salesman who works for a think tank and travels around the USA frequently on business trips. The story is set in the immediate aftermath of the...

The introductory paragraph does not include the time of the essay, or summarize the essay, but works to introduce the topic whilst peaking the reader's interest. The topic of course is that of a...

In 1956, Richard Wilbur wrote his often-anthologized poem “Love calls us to the things of this world.” In this poem, a sleeper rouses, and in the state halfway between slumber and wakefulness, sees...

Sherman Alexie, "a Spokane Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state," was able to teach himself to read at the age of three. Although his...

The three short stories—Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education," and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"—all deal with tradition. Tradition is...

Let us remember that an epiphany is defined as a moment of sudden insight experienced by a character when they realise something about who they are or their own identity. We can see that Jackson,...

What an interesting question! Two authors with very distinct styles, indeed. I think that both authors express similar IDEAS and THEMES, but the way they deliver these ideas (another part of style)...

Sherman Alexie is a contemporary Native American writer from the state of Washington. In 1993 in published his first book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which won the...

You could actually argue that there are several acts of kindness in this impressive short story. However, the most significant comes at the end of the tale, when Jackson returns to the pawn shop...

In the beginning of Sherman Alexie's book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior lives and goes to school on the Spokane reservation. Like most things on "The Rez," Junior's...

Sherman Alexie's stories about Native Americans are extremely important to the discourse. The reality is that the voice of adolescent Native Americans is missing from the dialogue of identity...