Fallon 1 Kimberly Fallon Professor Lago English 1500 16 April 2014 The Balance of Living

The art of growing up is always filled with awkward stages and many differnt learning experiences that one faces. We take these occurrences and use them to help us grow as a person both inside and out. Yet for most Americans, the only problems they face are whether or not they will fit in at school or if they have the latest pair of sneakers. For the well-known author Sherman Alexie, he faced and continues to face the harsh reality of balancing two very different lives. These personas include living as a Native American in the United States, two very unlike cultures that one may find hard to balance. Luckily for Sherman Alexie, he found his niche in this world where he can live both lives peacefully. As he writes about characters in his short stories and novels, ones that can be gathered to reflect his inner struggles, he not only appeals to Americans, but also other Indians. He is able to embrace his culture and inform other people what it is like growing up Indian, a very deep-rooted culture, in a very modern world. Though Alexie is very successful and respected in both his cultures, his writing depicts the struggle to find a balance between two worlds, and still does today. It is a battle that he will have to endure for the rest of his life, but one that is worth the fight to keep his identity his own and unique, just like his stories.

Fallon 2 Growing up in the United States, most children receive the same opportunities to go to school and receive a fair education; but for Sherman Alexie, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, his schooling was not the same as other typical Americans. The government did not regulate reservation schools as ineptly, and many of the students were forced to use the same materials that their parents had when they attended school. The main character, Arnold Spirit Jr., in Sherman Alexies novel The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian, states This book belongs to Agnes AdamsAgnes Adams is my mother. My mother! And Adams is her maiden nameYep, so that means I was staring at a geometry book that was at least thirty years older than I wasMy school and tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same old dang books our parents studied from. That is the saddest thing in the world after being handed a book from his teacher (Alexie 23). This novel is almost a blue print to the real life of the author, who in his actual life had at one point received a book to study in school that was used by his mother. Alexie felt extremely underwhelmed by the lack of education he was receiving, and attempted to teach himself by reading anything he could get his hands on. Yet this too did not fulfill his needs. Doing great academically, he and his parents decided to send him to Pembroke Academy, thirty miles away from the reservation. Here, he was the only student of Native American heritage and received his first true encounter with American students and people of different nationalities. Again, his novels protagonist also asks his parents for a better future, I want to transfer schools

Fallon 3 with the help of his geometry teachers who calmly advised him to find a better life saying, Youre going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation (Alexie 34). In his own life, Alexie joined many clubs and was even a member of the varsity basketball team, just like his fictional character, which was a very different scene, compared to his fellow Indian peers. The novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was almost an autobiography of Alexies own life that he shared with not only other American Indians, but the world as well. Yet joining a new community did not change his views on the culture that taught him so much. He later integrated both his native life with the American culture into his writing. In addition to Sherman Alexies balance with his culture and education, he also struggled finding peace with himself. The author was born with hydrocephalus, which is when too much cerebral fluid is in the skull. Junior from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was also born with this condition, and relates to Alexie's battle for survival, and later acceptance from his peers. After surviving surgery, both Alexies and Juniors heads were abnormally large and for years after the procedure suffered from seizures. Fellow American Indian boys started to make fun of the boys, nicknaming them Globe because of the size of their heads. Junior recalls some incidents saying And my skull was enormous. Epic. My head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it. Some of the kids called me Orbit. Some of the kids called me Globe. The bullies would pick me up, spin me in a circle, put their finger down on my skull, and say, I want to go here (Alexie 3). Not only was the fictional character bullied, but Sherman as well. For years he suffered hateful words

Fallon 4 and mockings. Until he left the reservation to attend a modern American high school, he did not know that other people would accept him for who he was. In his new schools, he found new friends, teachers, and ultimately peace with himself. He no longer resented the health problems and the bullies, rather used it to inspire his writings. Alexie had to balance the struggles he faced from the world, and the comfort of accepting who he was, through his novels and poems and also through humor. While Alexie was able to balance two very different worlds, he also struggled to keep who he was from changing. Being an Indian and celebrating his heritage was an extremely important factor. The culture and the people that come beforehand play a role in which who an individual becomes. Fallsapart.com informs readers that Alexie presently lives full time miles from his hometown in Seattle and does not plan on returning to the reservation in which he was raised, but embraces the change by calling himself an urban Indian. Being fully emerged in American society, Alexie struggled to keep his Indian identity relevant. He knew his past and what it taught him, but a fresh start and new and inviting things laid ahead of him, a struggle shown in the quote from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven saying, "Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you (Alexie 87). It was a tug-of-war with who he was and who he could be. Overcoming this problem was tough, but the niche that allowed for the world to be given the gift of his writing was when Alexie learned that he could write poems and short stories of contemporary Native American reservation life (Poetryfoundation.org) which he was extremely successful with.

Fallon 5 Writing about his life through fictional yet emotionally deep and intricate characters allowed him to melt two lives into one, giving birth to a strong career. Poetryfoundation.com states: he writing evokes sadness and despair for the lost culture in his poems, novels, and shorts stories, yet also a sense of respect and compassion for the characters and the people that inspire them. Alexie brings awareness and education about Indians across the country, a useful tool in helping people in the United States understand people whose generations have been here for centuries before any white man ever laid foot on this land. Putting his life and stories into sharable forms of knowledge allows his past and memoires to live on and grow. As children grow up and start to raise families of their own, their familys stories and their own get passed on from generation to generation. It allows us to not only remember ones that were dearly loved, but to also learn a moral lesson or to have a needed laugh to relieve stress. We remember the people that came before us through stories, and the American Indians and many other cultures in fact have embraced this form of remembrance for decades. Whether a tale is sorrowful or joyous, it is a time to look back and cherish the time we have on this earth and to reflect on the short time we get to have on it. Each day we grow and change, but we also need to remember all the occurrences that one has endured which allow us to reach today. Though the road is bumpy, it is worth the ride and in Helen Kellers worlds Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood (Helen Keller) and in the end, learning through living is the best way to make your make on this world. So allow tour stories to be memorable so they too can be told

Fallon 6 generations to come.

Fallon 7 Works Cited

DeNuccio, Jerome. "Slow Dancing with Skeletons: Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." Critique 44.1 (Fall 2002): 86-96. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. David A. Galens. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. "Home." Sherman Alexie. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014 "Sherman Alexie." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. Alexie, Sherman, and Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print. "Sherman Alexie." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.