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The toughest Indian in the world / Sherman Alexie.
In these nine stories, we meet the kind of American Indians we rarely see in literature -- the kind who pay their bills, hold down jobs, fall in and out of love. A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. A Spokane son waits for his diabetic father to come home from the hospital, tossing out the Hershey Kisses the father has hidden all over the house. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with
Record details
- ISBN: 9780802138002 :
- ISBN: 0802138004 :
- Physical Description: 238 p. ; 22 cm.
- Publisher: New York : Grove Press, c2000.
Content descriptions
| Formatted Contents Note: | Assimilation -- The toughest Indian in the world -- Class -- South by southwest -- The sin eaters -- Indian country -- Saint Junior -- Dear John Wayne -- One good man. |
| Biographical or Historical Data: | Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. is a Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, and filmmaker. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Indians of North America > Fiction. United States > Social life and customs > 20th century > Fiction. West (U.S.) > Social life and customs > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Short stories, American > Indian authors. |
Available copies
- 3 of 3 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Vanderhoof Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 3 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanderhoof Public Library | AF ALE MJC (Text) | 35193000248015 | Mary John Collection | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 April 2000
/*Starred Review*/ Alexie is an impassioned, inventive, and theatrical storyteller who subverts all our narrational and emotional expectations. He returns here to the short story, the form he used with such originality in his first book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), the basis for the acclaimed film Smoke Signals. It is a superb collection: his humor is swift and wry; his characters vital and complex; and his wild story lines express his clear-eyed view of Indian culture, his fury over racism, and his deep and abiding faith in love. In the astonishing title story, an assimilated Indian newspaper reporter who prides himself on his habit of picking up Indian hitchhikers has his complacency shattered when he stops for a fighter who redefines "tough." The sanctity of marriage is celebrated in two unforgettable stories. In "Affirmation," a calculated act of adultery is juxtaposed against a suicide as an Indian wife and her white husband recognize, once again, the strength of their bond. In "Saint Junior," a hilarious, romantic, and wise portrait of a solid Indian marriage, Alexie conjures a world in which salmon, the blues, basketball, books, and the rewards of true love are hallowed against a backdrop of white hypocrisy and fear. "The Sin Eaters," the book's most disturbing story, is a grim fable that weds the Holocaust with the genocidal conquest of the American Indians, and its stark presence counterbalances the ironic hilarity Alexie generates when he skewers academic pretension, praises women and familial loyalty, and imagines John ("Call me Marion") Wayne in love with a young Spokane Indian woman. Alexie's stories cast a rainbow of feelings, experiences, and ways of knowing across the page, a resplendent and evocative reflection of human suffering, folly, and the persistent dream of a better world. ((Reviewed April 1, 2000)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2000 April #1
A mixed-bag collection of nine stories from the popular American (Spokane Coeur d'Alene) Indian author of such breakthrough successes as The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) and Reservation Blues (1995).Alexie has been known to scorn the politically correct contemporary appellation "Native American," and this volume rather overindulges what appears to be its author's sardonic reaction to his own celebrity and perceived exoticism ("Strangely enough," observes the Sherman Alexieâlike narrator of the bitterly funny "Class," "there were aphrodisiacal benefits from claiming to be descended from ritual cannibals"). A few of these tales feel like understandably unpublished early work ("South by Southwest," a flagrantly manic farce that laboriously satirizes white liberal guilt, and "Indian Country," about a successful writer's cultural and sexual alienation, are especially suspect). Even at his best, Alexie doesn't construct; he riffs: to splendid effect in "The Sin Eaters," a rich fantasy of ethnic conflict, incest, and genocide laden with vivid literary and biblical allusions and eye-popping metaphors ("They're going to take the tomorrow out of our bones"); "Dear John Wayne," a cultural anthropologist's interview with the aged Indian woman whoclaims she was the eponymous screen star's lover (during the filming of The Searchers); and "Saint Junior," a mischievous lampooning of affirmative-action programs. Alexie digs still deeper in rock-hard portrayals of a volatile "mixed" married couple ("Assimilation"); a son preparing to bid his dying father farewell ("One Good Man"); and the surprise-filled title story, about an Indian intellectual who has strayed uncomfortably away from his origins, and is reconnected with them after he picks up a menacing hitchhiker.Alexie knows he's contemporary literature's "Indian du jour" (a phrase he has often used), and isn't quite sure how he feels about it. That ambivalence gives his writing a salutary charge of energy, making him one of our most challenging, interesting, and promising young writers.(First printing of $75,000; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour) Copyright 2000 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2000 June #2
Alexie may not be the toughest Indian in the world (in this stunning new collection, that honor goes to a Lummi fighter picked up by the narrator or perhaps it's the durable narrator himself), but he definitely writes some of the toughest prose around. This work, Alexie's first collection since The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, offers nine stories rendered in muscular, unencumbered language that can deliver a shock like a good, hard punch. No, we shouldn't be much surprised when a character announces, "Indians just like to believe that white people will vanish, perhaps explode into smoke, if they are ignored enough times," but the delivery is so cool we are caught off guard. As the stories proceed from an Indian wife reconnecting with her husband after a calculated tryst to a lesbian couple (one Indian, one white) whose lives are complicated by a down-and-out male friend to an Indian father happy (is he really?) that his son has a good life with a white stepfather, Alexie moves in for the kill, consistently surprising us with stories that are neither sentimental nor angry but far more emotionally complex. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2000 April #3
A prolific novelist, poet and screenplay writer, Alexie (Indian Killer; Reservation Blues) has been hailed as one of the best young writers of his generation. This dexterous second collection of stories contains what may be one of the best short fiction pieces of the year. "The Toughest Indian in the World" follows a young Spokane Indian who works at an all-white newspaper in Seattle and, in a forlorn attempt to reconnect with his roots, has his first homosexual experience with a tough Lummi fighter. It's a moving story that skillfully employs symbolism and flashbacks to construct an ending that is both uplifting and sorrowful. Many of the eight other stories in this collection also deal with urban Indians who are straddling two worlds: an intimate but indigent life on the reservation and an affluent but strange and sometimes hostile white middle-class existence. Their solutions to this double bind are rarely ordinary. "Assimilation" tells of a Coeur d'Alene woman who deliberately cheats on her white husband, only to rediscover her affection for him in the middle of a traffic jam. "Class" features a Spokane who sometimes tells white women he's Aztec, because "there were aphrodisiacal benefits from claiming to be descended from ritual cannibals." In "South by Southwest" a white man and a fat Indian nicknamed Salmon Boy, who declares he's not homosexual but does believe in love, set off on a nonviolent killing spree. Two tales, "Saint Junior" and "A Good Man," deal with marriage and death on the rez. The anger in these narratives is leavened by Alexie's acerbic wit and his obvious belief in the redemptive power of love. One exception, however, is "The Sin Eaters," an apocalyptic tale in which America's Indians are rounded up into massive underground prisons where soldiers force them to breed and give up their blood. Humorous, disturbing, formally inventive and heartwarming, Alexie's stories continually surprise, revealing him once again as a master of his craft. Agent, Nancy Cahoon, N. Stauffer Assoc. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
