Will this school district in Idaho ban Sherman Alexie's popular novel or not? Read this article to find out more!
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LET US BEGIN
What truly makes you who you are? What does it truly mean to be Native American? There are many factors, characteristics, forces within and outside of a person that help identify them as Native American. To name a few things that are contributing factors are; life on the reservation, problems within families, and the contemplation a Native American faces with balancing life on the reservation and life outside of it. The Native American writer Sherman Alexie was raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington (“A Reservation of the Mind”). Early in his youth, he arrived at the conclusion that in order to have better opportunities he would have to go to a predominantly white high school. This monumental event in his life served as the foundation in his journey of becoming a writer. In order to understand Sherman Alexie's work, one must understand his background. His Native American upbringing heavily influenced his writing. As an impoverished young reservation Indian, Sherman Alexie’s own personal experiences with poverty, alcoholism, and the conclusion that life out of the reservation would make a better, make an impact on his writing style that invoked in readers the awareness of tragedy, pain and how humor can be used to masked these emotions. |