Sherman Alexie Superman
My mind provides me with its own super-power: imagination. I can visualize stories of my own and translate them as words or pictures. The author of The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie, may arguably agree with my statement. Mr. Alexie presents a connection of literary understanding with visual images and imaginative thought. As an author, he now lies opposite of the language barrier that once obstructed him.
And for Alexie, life on the other side of the barrier is truly different. By working past his barrier, Alexie could read “books in the car”, “bits and pieces” of books in the bookstores, “the “newspaper”, “bulletins”, “magazines” and “junk mail”, He could read virtually anything that interested him because he “picked up that Superman comic book” and behooved himself to learn how to read. This choice was not because someone told him too, but because, as he said, “I refused to fail.” But what would failure encompass? Perhaps Alexie thought of the “already defeated Indian kids” who ignored him. After all, “They struggled with basic reading”, “They were monosyllabic”, and “They submissively ducked …show more content…
The door represents the level of expectation set by Indian children who don’t believe in their own merit since Indian children “were expected to be stupid”. What thoroughly welds the door in place is the intracultural acceptance of these low expectations. If the Indian children “lived up to those expectations”, they were “ceremonially accepted by other Indians”; otherwise, they were told to “stay quiet”. It is why Alexie was considered an “oddity” in his reservation, not a “prodigy”. It is why, despite Alexie’s attempts at throwing his “weight against their locked doors”, the Indian children could not become novelists and
And for Alexie, life on the other side of the barrier is truly different. By working past his barrier, Alexie could read “books in the car”, “bits and pieces” of books in the bookstores, “the “newspaper”, “bulletins”, “magazines” and “junk mail”, He could read virtually anything that interested him because he “picked up that Superman comic book” and behooved himself to learn how to read. This choice was not because someone told him too, but because, as he said, “I refused to fail.” But what would failure encompass? Perhaps Alexie thought of the “already defeated Indian kids” who ignored him. After all, “They struggled with basic reading”, “They were monosyllabic”, and “They submissively ducked …show more content…
The door represents the level of expectation set by Indian children who don’t believe in their own merit since Indian children “were expected to be stupid”. What thoroughly welds the door in place is the intracultural acceptance of these low expectations. If the Indian children “lived up to those expectations”, they were “ceremonially accepted by other Indians”; otherwise, they were told to “stay quiet”. It is why Alexie was considered an “oddity” in his reservation, not a “prodigy”. It is why, despite Alexie’s attempts at throwing his “weight against their locked doors”, the Indian children could not become novelists and