I came home from work today and collected the numerous boxes from my front porch. Between Christmas shopping and getting some last minute things from Amazon for a trip my husband is taking there has been a pretty steady stream of boxes gracing our household. Needless to say, I was so excited to see I had received my Cannonball gift since everything else coming to the house seems to be for other people… Well, I have to nominate ElCicco for the Cannonball Gift Giving Hall […]
The Urban Indian Boy Enjoys Good Health Insurance
In my developmental English classes, my students and I often read Sherman Alexie’s literacy narrative, “Superman and Me,” where he describes learning to read at age three, puzzling out the meaning of text by looking at the frames of a comic book. He traces his impulse to read to his father—a man who filled the family house with books of all kinds—often purchased used and sometimes by the pound. He writes, “My father loved books and because I loved my father with an aching devotion, […]
She was, all by herself, an entire tribe of contradictions
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me is a memoir about Sherman Alexie’s mother Lillian, his childhood, and Native American history; it’s about grief, anger, and forgiveness; it’s about victims of abuse, their bullies, and fighting back as a point of honor. It’s about the specific lives of Lillian Alexie and her son, and the general experience of Native Americans in white America. Ultimately, in order to try to understand the mother who both gave him so much and hurt him so much, Alexie […]
This is how you do young adult fiction.
Dammit, I knew I should have written this review when I first finished the book, but I decided to push it off because it seemed too hard to try and sum up all my feeeeelings, but joke’s on me, now it’s even harder! Sherman Alexie has been one of my favorite writers since I was in college and one of my English comp teachers made us watch Smoke Signals, which is based off Alexie’s short story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” and […]
Book Club Discussion Post: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
We have reached the day – it’s time to discuss The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. There have been many positive, and introspective reviews of the book both since our announcement of its choice for this book club, and over the years of Cannonball Read’s existence. So, let’s dig in and talk about the why’s and how’s with this book, and some larger thematic conversations as well. Let’s start with a few ground rules: Since we’re anticipating lots of conversation, […]
So I looked up the word “grief” in the dictionary.
Yay for us for picking this book for book club! I’m amazed and delighted and impressed by this book. Confident in its Young Adult-ness, it then refuses to pull any punches. I learned so much, and am so glad that “youth” everywhere have this available to them. I think it’s fair to say that we all have an awareness on some level or another how much the Reservations system has failed the Native Americans and Native Canadians across this continent. How hard life is on […]