Description
Book SynopsisSherman Alexie is, by many accounts, the most widely read American Indian writer in the United States and likely in the world. A literary polymath, Alexie's nineteen published books span a variety of genres and include his most recent National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
Now, for the first time, a volume of critical essays is devoted to Alexie's work both in print and on the big screen. Editors Jeff Berglund and Jan Roush have assembled twelve leading scholars of American Indian literature to provide new perspectives on a writer with his finger on the pulse of America.
Interdisciplinary in their approach to Alexie's work, these essays cover the writer's entire career, and are insightful and accessible to scholars and lay readers alike. This volume is a worthy companion to the work of one of our nations's most recognized contemporary voices.
Trade Review"The bar is raised. I believe this work will be seen as a role model for literary criticism of Native American fiction, poetry, and film."—Simon Ortiz, poet and professor of English at Arizona State University
"An important and timely work.... This volume sets a high standard of scholarship for those committed to grappling with the broader complexities of Alexie's life and work. The collaborative tenor of the project is particularly refreshing, because it invites scholars to converse across disciplines in order to keep pace with an iconic writer whose literary reputation now extends far beyond the Pacific Northwest."—
Pacific Northwest Quarterly "An exciting addition to the growing body of scholarship on Sherman Alexie's work. The extensive bibliography of work by and about Alexie that appears at the end of this collection alone makes this book an invaluable resource for scholars and future scholars of Alexie's work."
—Studies in American Indian LiteraturesTable of ContentsEdited by Jeff Berglund and Jan Roush, eds., Sherman A Collection of Critical Essays
Alexie:
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “Imagination Turns Every Word into a Bottle
Rocket”: An Introduction to Sherman Alexie
Jeff Berglund
Dancing That Way, Things Began to Change: The Ghost Dance as Pantribal Metaphor in Sherman Alexie’s Writing
Lisa Tatonetti
“Survival = Anger x Imagination”: Sherman Alexie’s Dark Humor
Philip Heldrich
“An Extreme Need to Tell the Truth”: Silence and Language in Sherman Alexie’s “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire”
Elizabeth Archuleta
Rock and Roll, Redskins, and Blues in Sherman Alexie’s Work
P. Jane Hafen
This Is What It Means to Say Reservation Cinema: Making Cinematic Indians in Smoke Signals
James H. Cox
Native Sensibility and the Significance of Women in
Smoke Signals Angelica Lawson
The Distinctive Sonority of Sherman Alexie’s Indigenous Poetics
Susan Berry Brill de RamÍrez
The Poetics of Tribalism in Sherman Alexie’s The Summer of Black Widows
Nancy J. Peterson
Sherman Alexie’s Challenge to the Academy’s Teaching of Native American Literature, Non-Native Writers, and Critics
Patrice Hollrah
“Indians Do Not Live in Cities, They Only Reside There”: Captivity and the Urban Wilderness in Indian Killer
Meredith James
Indigenous Liaisons: Sex/Gender Variability, Indianness, and Intimacy in Sherman Alexie’s The Toughest Indian in the World
Stephen F. Evans
Sherman Alexie’s Transformation of “Ten Little Indians”
Margaret O’Shaughnessey
Healing the Soul Wound in Flight and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Jan Johnson
The Business of Writing: Sherman Alexie’s Meditations on Authorship
Jeff Berglund
Contributors
Bibliography
Index
