Sherman Alexie s Childhood And Education - 1896 Words

Sherman Alexie’s childhood and education have had a profound effect on his writing and career. Being a Native American growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Alexie has had to fight stereotypes and certain negative influences such as alcoholism and poverty his entire life. The reader can gain a better understanding of Alexie’s struggles and negative influences in his life through one of his poems, â€Å"Influences†, where he discusses the negative influences he faced with alcohol from his own parents. Sherman Alexie has had notable success as praised by Daniel Grassian, â€Å"†¦the picture of Alexie that emerges is one of a writer who is fiercely talented, intelligent, witty, and committed to helping readers understand contemporary Native†¦show more content†¦In the early part of his career, he published a number of his works in the magazine Hanging Loose in 1990 (Overview – Sherman Alexie). At that time, he found the motivation to quit drinking and devoted himself to a writing career (Overview – Sherman Alexie). His first publication released in 1992 entitled, The Business of Fancydancing was a collection of short stories and poetry (Lewis). He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship ($20,000 which brought him recognition as a writer of short stories and poetry (Lewis). He went on to receive the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award ($105,000) for his work on an outreach project to organize writing workshops for Native peoples in Seattle in 1994 (Lewis). A major milestone was the release of his first novel in 1995, Reservation Blues, which won the American Book Award in 1996 (Overview – Sherman Alexie). He was further recognized with the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award for recognition of a sequel to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and publication of poems in many journals (Lewis). Later in his career he became a filmmaker. He worked on a screenplay incorporating much of the material in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Overview – Sherman Alexie). Released in 1998, Smoke Signals was praised, winning both the Audience Award and Filmmakers TrophyShow MoreRelatedThe Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian By Sherman Alexie Essay1757 Words   |  8 Pages Sherman Alexie is an award-winning author who wrote the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The book is a semi-autobiography of Alexie’s life and his experience growing up on an Indian Reservation, as well as a more economically well-off school, where he was the only Native American student. The book gives readers the opportunity to get an idea of what life is like living on an impoverished reservation. It depicts the struggles of young Arnold Spirit Jr., or Junior, as he isRead MoreOmniscient Point of View in â€Å"This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona2086 Words   |  9 PagesMeans to Say Phoenix, Arizona† The story â€Å"This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona† by Sherman Alexie is a fictional narrative that reflects his experiences during his past and present life. The author allows the audience to become the social media that critiques his life when he evokes important episodes of his life through Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire liveliness. In this process, Sherman Alexis uses his omniscient point of view to tell his readers about the actions of his character;Read MoreAnalysis Of The Narrative The Twelve By Sandra Cisneros863 Words   |  4 PagesZinsser argues that college students are under excessive stress to plan their future and succeed. 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Daniel Fisher of Forbes Magazine stated that, â€Å"income, not race, is the real determining factor in higher education today.† and according to http://www.postsecondary.org, â€Å"while 79% of students born into the top income quartile in the U.S. obtain bachelor’s degrees, only 11% of students from bottom-quartile families graduate from four-year universities.† But doesRead MoreLiterary Criticism : The Free Encyclopedia 7351 Words   |  30 Pages Bildungsroman From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbÉ ªldÊŠÅ‹s.Ê oËÅ'maË n]; German: novel of formation, education, culture),[a] novel of formation, novel of education,[2] or coming-of-age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age),[3]