⋙ Download Free Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie 9780802120397 Books

Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie 9780802120397 Books

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Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie 9780802120397 Books

Some of these stories are hard reading for me, a white person. Having lived among Native Americans for several decades I'm familiar with some conditions on reservations, and some of the hard history. Mr. Alexie does an outstanding job of portraying the people as a lot like the rest of us ... except for the unique circumstances which are to be expected from them having been the subjects of a cultural genocide that began in the 1600s and continues to this day.

Some of his stories made me laugh very hard, others left my teeth on edge -- which is okay because in order to get messages across in a country where the straight and honest history of Europeans' unjust, sometimes criminal and frequently horrifying treatment of indigenous Americans still is not taught in enough public schools it is necessary to be direct. He does than with his own unmistakable flair for contrasting details. (And one does realize that the Natives also did horrifying things to white people as they were being persecuted. In wars nobody comes out ready for sainthood.

I don't think the pain is ever going to end for America's native peoples until there has come into existence -- and been so for a number generations -- way more transparency in what has long been and, to a lesser extent, still is taught in schools, and more effort by the government to address the wrongs. For starters perhaps try apologizing the way the Canadian government is doing with the First People.

In this particular collection of stories Sherman Alexie shows both the up and down sides of contemporary Native living. There are some drunks, some sad, some crazy, one or so dull (that's just part of the story), but they are his kind of drunks, people whose stories touch you. There are also successful professional Indians living in cities for the most part, but usually with a connection to the reservation that can be extremely strong. As somebody who cares about good education being available to all people, everywhere, I liked reading about people in these strories who had that, and put it to work. How they did ... well, that's the point of the stories, and I enjoyed it all.

To me an achievement of his writing is that whoever you are, you will gain unforgettable insights into the realities of being Native American here and now, while both laughing and gritting your teeth and possibly crying, too. As with Alice Walker writing about black Americans, when I see a Sherman Alexie book I haven't read yet, picking it up feels .... just a little .... like putting my hand on something that might shake me up. Do I dare to open this door? Oh, yes, well worth it.


Tags : Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories [Sherman Alexie] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV>Sherman Alexie’s stature as a writer of stories, poems, and novels has soared over the course of his twenty-book,Sherman Alexie,Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories,Grove Press,0802120393,Short Stories (single author),Indians of North America,Indians of North America;Fiction.,Short stories, American,Short stories.,ALEXIE, SHERMAN - PROSE & CRITICISM,AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY FICTION,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction-Short Stories (single author),GENERAL,General Adult,Short stories,United States

Blasphemy New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie 9780802120397 Books Reviews

You can quibble about the selection of older stories and the odd order of the TOC--no logic of any kind seems to guide it. But if you are a fan of Alexie's short fiction, this book is a must-have. The new stories--some of them very short, some very long--are memorable and well-written. I read through in the order presented, skipping only a couple of stories I have read numerous times. Even those I read parts of. Alexie's work is uncompromising. He's beholden to no group--his Rez, NA activists, etc. He;s kind of fearless so you have frank sexuality and multi-sexuality, LOL moments, and emotionally moving passages that mostly seem earned. He takes on some hard subjects as usual--addictions, racism, masculinity, fathers, the complexities of being a member of a colonized partly assimilated people. These's a lot of basketball. This book is a good intro to his short fiction but does not replace readng The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, his first and most consistently great collection. The stories from this book in Blasphemy are all good, classics of a sort. But the other stories in TLRATFIH are great and bear repeated visits. Selections from his other collections are mostly well chosen, though there are a couple I would not have included. This is inevitable for this type of collection. Obviously I am a fan. If you have read him and are not a fan I'd not recommend it; if you are a fan, you should read it.
The focused reader will note that all of Alexie's stories are to some degree autobiographical, as much as he would deny it, and all very repetitive in characters and motifs. It is, as such, very easy to mix up any two of his short stories. Sometimes the narrator is a poor, alcoholic, homeless Indian living on the "Rez," sometimes he/she is that lucky Indian who gets off the Rez and is adopted by the world of the white middle class. Invariably, there is an archetypal "Junior" in the story who confirms all stereotypes Alexie attributes to his people, and there is the narrator's conflict with his/her place in Indian culture or between cultures. Although many Native American studies educators will roundly deny this, Alexie's bigotry is spread thin and wide throughout his stories — one must assume that he finds catharsis in waxing philosophical on killing all the whites, for revenge or otherwise.
Those are all my qualms about Alexie's writing. By the same token, he is also an amazing writer, who can drown the reader in the emotion of the story, and of the narrator, so that you can almost feel the suffering, or the isolation, or the existential crises of the stories. You will learn a good deal about Native American culture and the contemporary "Indian Problem" — no longer referring to the white euphemism for the need to eradicate or reeducate the Indians but the struggle of the widespread poverty and squalor that Native Americans face on and off reservations today. Alexie explores issues of identity and culture unabashedly and beautifully, and this selection of stories is very representative of his best writing. He may be controversial, but not many others are stepping up to write on these matters as viscerally as him.
Some of these stories are hard reading for me, a white person. Having lived among Native Americans for several decades I'm familiar with some conditions on reservations, and some of the hard history. Mr. Alexie does an outstanding job of portraying the people as a lot like the rest of us ... except for the unique circumstances which are to be expected from them having been the subjects of a cultural genocide that began in the 1600s and continues to this day.

Some of his stories made me laugh very hard, others left my teeth on edge -- which is okay because in order to get messages across in a country where the straight and honest history of Europeans' unjust, sometimes criminal and frequently horrifying treatment of indigenous Americans still is not taught in enough public schools it is necessary to be direct. He does than with his own unmistakable flair for contrasting details. (And one does realize that the Natives also did horrifying things to white people as they were being persecuted. In wars nobody comes out ready for sainthood.

I don't think the pain is ever going to end for America's native peoples until there has come into existence -- and been so for a number generations -- way more transparency in what has long been and, to a lesser extent, still is taught in schools, and more effort by the government to address the wrongs. For starters perhaps try apologizing the way the Canadian government is doing with the First People.

In this particular collection of stories Sherman Alexie shows both the up and down sides of contemporary Native living. There are some drunks, some sad, some crazy, one or so dull (that's just part of the story), but they are his kind of drunks, people whose stories touch you. There are also successful professional Indians living in cities for the most part, but usually with a connection to the reservation that can be extremely strong. As somebody who cares about good education being available to all people, everywhere, I liked reading about people in these strories who had that, and put it to work. How they did ... well, that's the point of the stories, and I enjoyed it all.

To me an achievement of his writing is that whoever you are, you will gain unforgettable insights into the realities of being Native American here and now, while both laughing and gritting your teeth and possibly crying, too. As with Alice Walker writing about black Americans, when I see a Sherman Alexie book I haven't read yet, picking it up feels .... just a little .... like putting my hand on something that might shake me up. Do I dare to open this door? Oh, yes, well worth it.