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Title: The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie ISBN: 0-8021-3800-4 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 09 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.72 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: ALEXIE MOVES UP TO HEAVYWEIGHT (WRITING) CLASS
Comment: "Writin' is fightin'!" poet/novelist/essayist Ishmael Reed has declared. No doubt. Saying the pen (or the word processor) is mightier than the sword recognizes that literacy and literature are heavy weapons. Writers I respect and cherish wield words effectively to combat ignorance, bias, prejudice, limited expectations, all sorts of social and intellectual short-sightedness. A writer throws down a gauntlet to the reader-"Deal with this!" A really good writer will likewise challenge himself.
Sherman Alexie steps up with his second collection of short stories. Here are only about half as many stories as THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, but they're longer, fuller. They evidence his growth, maturity, in craft and imagination. Though he's not above old tricks like narrative sleight-of-hand - his ironic sense of humor is, if anything, even wryer - his style, while still lean, is now not quite so spare.
THE TOUGHEST INDIAN IN THE WORLD reflects Alexie's and his characters' journeys in "the adult world." They must make choices about who they are, where they live and what they do, and especially, who they're with. Then again, just as journalist Louis Lomax noted, every writer ("like every preacher") has "one great theme" that he returns to over and again. Alexie's is (to borrow from James Baldwin) "the price of the ticket," that two-way cost of modern Indian assimilation - forward and outward into "American" society, while yet attempting to bridge the disconnection from tradition and heritage.
These stories range in emotional resonance from resigned sigh to primal scream. They depict, often, people at personal crossroads. In fact, love and choice (with "love," particularly, in the sense of M. Scott Peck's landmark THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - the expression of a will and commitment to enable spiritual growth and respect uniqueness - not to be confused with "romance") are the source of their drama - and the elusive solution.
There are the Coeur d'Alene woman high-tech executive and the city-bred Spokane corporate lawyer, each living "the American dream" life while harboring inner rage at the choices they've made, their self-reflective rage literally finding stereotypic Indian figures to help shatter their "civilized" boundaries. There's the feckless poet looking for love in all the wrong people. The pudgy teenager willing to be the hostage of an inept, alienated holdup man. Most harrowing (and deliberately so, since it's a literal nightmare) is the protracted horror of a young boy swept along in the cascading events of "the final solution of the Indian problem."
There's some wistfulness also: The recollections of the woman loved by John Wayne on the set of "The Searchers." The adult son who extends himself to ease the last days of his diabetic amputee father. And my favorite, "Saint Junior," where the recognition that a married couple achieves strikes me as being, really, about anything you truly hold dear in life: Affection is helpful, maybe essential, but will and commitment get the job done...
"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love--it just happens!--but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch... Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left--the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together."
The best thing I can say about this book (keeping in mind it was like "dessert," the third Alexie book I read in one week - yes, that taken by his work!) is that a year later, I can still feel the stories. Know what I mean? They "live" with me! Like someone's children you've grown fond of, you may forget the names but you don't forget the shape of the faces, the outline and texture of their personalities, your emotional response to them. And you're sure that you'll carry the memory with you for the rest of your life.
Rating: 5
Summary: Stories that make you think.
Comment: Sherman Alexie's narratives in "The Toughest Indian in the World" combine the author's matter-of-fact, understated style with his edgy humor, irony and passion. The result is a collection of short stories (with numerous subplots) which will always make you think, sometimes make you laugh, and sometimes make you get angry. Alexie's heroes come from different tribes and all walks of life, but whether they themselves like it or not, they are all Indian - not: "Native American." ("You ain't Indian," the Spokane father of a Spokane student thrown out of class over the question "What is an Indian?" tells his son's mixed-race professor in "One Good Man." "No. You might be a Native American but you sure as hell ain't Indian.") Not all of these stories are light fare - "The Sin Eaters," which reflects on the darkest chapters of American Indian history, is strongly reminiscent of Huxley's "Brave New World." (Not recommended reading before you go to bed, at least if you have a vivid imagination.) But whether hilariously funny or dead-serious, you will not be able to put them down until you've read the very last page - and you will be sorry when you have.
Rating: 5
Summary: My new favorite writer
Comment: I never used to like compilations of short stories, but Sherman Alexie has changed that. This is the second book I've read by him, and I'm infatuated with his writing. The Toughest Indian in the World is about Indians from all walks of life. A woman who is unhappy with her interracial marriage, a man who is madly in love with his wife, people who feel like they have to prove that they are Indian. Even though these stories are about Indian people, anybody of any race can relate to the characters in them. I would highly reccommend this book to everybody, no matter what you like to read, you will find something to relate to here.
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Title: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie ISBN: 0060976241 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 14 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Reservation Blues by Alexie Sherman ISBN: 0446672351 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.99 |
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Title: Indian Killer by Alexie Sherman ISBN: 0446673706 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie ISBN: 0802117449 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems by Sherman Alexie ISBN: 0914610007 Publisher: Hanging Loose Pr Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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