Sherman
Alexie
Lise
Erdrich
|
Back to the
Honoring Authors main page
Sherman Alexie
Born to a
Coeur d’Alene father and Spokane mother, Sherman Alexie grew up on the
Spokane Reservation in Wellpinit, WA. He was born with
hydrocephaly,
or excess fluid in the skull, and was not expected to survive. He
underwent surgery, which he was also not expected to survive, and the
doctors warned his parents that he would be mentally disabled.
Not
only did he survive, he surprised everyone with his advanced
intellectual abilities. His condition and the resulting surgery
left
him prone to seizures and he was unable to participate in many
activities. He learned to read by the age of three and read
everything
he could find. This combination of factors made him made him
rather
unusual in his community and a bit of an outcast.
Because of an incident at the reservation school in which he was
assigned a textbook that his mother had used 20 years earlier, Alexie
decided to seek a better academic situation in a school off the
reservation. Despite many personal hardships and an outsider
status in
both communities, Alexie excelled in high school and received a
scholarship to attend Gonzaga University. He pursued several
majors,
dropped out, and eventually found his way to studying literature at
Washington State University. While there, he discovered Native
writers
in a poetry anthology, Songs From
This Earth on Turtle’s Back. Fiercely moved by one poem in
particular, Elegy for the Forgotten
Oldsmobile by Adrian C. Lewis, Alexie began writing prolifically
and reading the work of other Indian writers.
Success quickly followed with the publication of I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing.
Readers and critics alike were drawn to his stories and poems about
reservation life, heartbreaking tales that are told with great love and
humor. Other well-known works by Alexie include Tonto and the Lone Ranger
Fistfight in Heaven, Indian
Killer, Reservation Blues,
and most recently, The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which details his childhood
and his high school experiences. Alexie also wrote the screenplay
for Smoke Signals, a feature
film based on one of his short stories that debuted at the Sundance
Film Festival.
Alexie has received multiple awards and honors in his career, including
the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (2007), the
Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award (2007),
and the PEN/Malamud Award from PEN/Faulkner Foundation. His
first
young adult novel, The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, won the 2008 American Indian
Youth Literature Award.
(Complete list: http://www.fallsapart.com/awards.html.)
Sources:
http://www.fallsapart.com
"Sherman Alexie." Authors and
Artists for Young Adults,
Volume 28. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center.
Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
Links:
Sherman Alexie’s Official Website: http://www.fallsapart.com
Books by Alexie: http://www.fallsapart.com/books.html
Audio clip of Alexie reading from The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian: http://www.fallsapart.com/truediary.htm
- scroll to Audio section, requires media player
Spokane Tribe: http://www.spokanetribe.com
Some of Sherman
Alexie's Works:
top
Back to the Honoring Authors main page
|
