There was a pivotal
moment in Sherman Alexie’s life when he knew he would have to leave the
reservation to get a better education. Upon entering his seventh grade math
class, Alexie was given a textbook with his mother’s name appearing as a
previous owner (Donovan). That incident solidified his notion that he would
have to leave in order to receive a better education. His transfer and
sequential years at an all-white high school served as the basis for his novel
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian.”
Upon
graduation, Alexie actually went to two universities where at the latter he
found his calling. At Washington State University, he stumbled upon a creative
writing class that would alter his life forever (Quirk). Using his experiences
in high school and college, Alexie portrays the truth of what life was like for
a Native American off the reservation. For example, in “How to Write the Great
American Indian Novel,” he makes mention of alcohol consumption. During his
college years, Alexie “feeling lost, lacking a life plan, he began drinking
heavily” (“A Reservation of
the Mind”). The pressure to do well
off of the reservation was so high, he needed to balance it with the use of
alcohol.
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Sherman
Alexie’s education had a huge influence on his work. Without his experiences as
a Native American struggling college student he would have never came upon Alex
Kuo’s (also of Native American descent) writing class. Kuo gave Alexie a copy
of an anthology edited by Joseph Bruchac, Songs
from This Earth on Turtle’s Back (1983) which inspired Alexie to start
writing (Quirk).
Alexie went on to say that after reading that book he began to cry and that the
book seemed to chronicle “my whole life” (“A Reservation of the Mind”). It
was so important for Alexie to see his life experience or similar ones written
out by another author was the main kick to him writing out his own struggling
and coping with the pain.