Growing Up An Indian In The American Society Looking For Identity In Two Of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

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Growing Up An Indian In The American Society Looking For Identity In Two Of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

Byadmin ianuarie 1, 2024

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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE

SPECIALIZATION: AMERICAN STUDIES

Title: Growing up an Indian in the American Society: Looking for Identity in two of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

Coordinating Professor,

Prof.univ. dr.

Cornelia Vlaicu

Student:

Denisa-Mădălina Olaru

2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

§Introduction……………………………………………………………………………

§Capitolul I. Sherman Alexie – from bullied kid to famous writer…………………..…

§Capitolul II.The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian…………………………..

2.1.Plot Summary…………………………………………………………………………..

2.2.Adolescence and its Flaws……………………………………………………………..

2.3.Reservations – Homes to Bloody History……………………………………………..

2.4.Leaving the reservation and becoming a traitor……………………………………….

2.5. When teenage meets race……………………………………………………………..

2.6.Losing original identity and understanding/accepting the new one…………………..

§Capitolul III. Flight themes…………………………………………………………………

3.1.Plot Summary………………………………………………………………………….

3.2.Present connected to past: a spiritual journey through history………………………..

3.3.Flight themes – stereotypical images of Native Americans…………………………..

3.4.Self-acceptance as a result of understanding the past…………………………………

§Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..

§References……………………………………………………………………………………

§Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………….

Growing up an Indian in the American Society: Looking for Identity in two of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

§INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theme of identity as a Native American in the American society. Native Americans have become a field of interest for me after I visited such a community in the Grand Canyon. Seeing them in person for the first time not only impressed me through the remote way they lived from the rest of society, but also made me want to learn more about them – their race, their history and their present. Questions like “how did they end up living so far from civilization”, “how can they support themselves” or “why don’t they move from the Grand Canyon” popped up in my head immediately. However, even with all these questions floating in my brain and not being able to answer them, I could still see happiness in their eyes, a kind of happiness caused by living a simple life.

Only a few months later, after I started reading about these people, have I understood that their present is still strongly connected to their past and that their way of life is deeply rooted in ancient customs and traditions, and this is the reason why it is so hard for this race especially to adapt and function in the American society in our day and age. After I decided to do my diploma paper on this topic, Sherman Alexie was the author that really caught my attention on this matter. Not only did his way of writing about Indians attracted me, but also the fact that he himself is one of them. The two novels that I chose to analyze and interpret are The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian and Flight, as they both depict the lives and struggles of teenage boys who are looking for their identities and are trying to make their way among Americans. However, the two novels differ in some aspects – one refers to the identity of a single person, while the other is deeper and more philosophical in the sense that through the eyes of a young boy and through fantastic “dreams” that depicted real events, it brings to attention the identity of an entire race, which was built after many bloody battles and painful happenings. I believe that studying them together would be an appropriate way to show what Indian identity means both or the individual and for the entire race.

This paper will be composed by three parts. The first will be dedicated to the author because it is important to have some biographical information about him in order to have a better understanding of the themes present in the two novels. The second part will refer to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the last one to Flight. Each of the last two parts will begin with the summary of each novel, in order to have a clear idea of the story and then, I will continue with theoretical aspects about topics like adolescence, history or race in order to have a background and a starting point. This will also help us put the stories in a context and understand the idea of reservations and the actual situation of Native Americans. Following theory, I will also have practical sections where I will focus on the main characters and I will analyze and interpret their behaviors and how they develop by the end of the stories.Through the course of this paper I will use several secondary sources to strengthen my arguments.

The first systematic reporting of factions among American Indians occurred in Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes, edited by Ralph Linton (1940). In touching on Northern Arapahoe factionalism Henry Elkin described the individuals chosen to serve on the tribe’s modem council as characterized by personalities considerably different from the traditional type. Instead of traditional values, councilmen put a premium on an ability to understand and to deal with officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result, “every choice of a councilman, and indirectly, every evaluation of an individual, involves conflicting standards of recognition, a perplexity inevitably resulting in social malaise. In the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, this movement to acculturate, assimilate, and Americanize the Indians was the single force dominating federal Indian affairs. There were only a few nay-sayers, a mere handful of perceptive men who saw that it would be difficult if not impossible to achieve the goals of the assimilationists (Cuddon). On the part of the Indians there were varied responses—withdrawal, armed resistance, passivity—but in the end, the tribesmen were subordinated to the power of the United States. At the beginning of the settlement, people had the mission of forming a new "ethnical group". They saw the American continent as a place where they could live together, not next to each other, a place where it did not matter where they came front and what they were in their "old" life. They thought it to be a place of a new beginning and a very important part of the American dream is expressed in the theory of the melting pot. It is said that America is a place where people from different races, countries, or social classes come to live together to form a new race. Culture and traditions, as well as the specification of a people, were supposed to melt together to form something new and something better. American Indian policy was not an end in itself (even though it might be argued that the bureaucracy in which the paternalism was embodied tended to perpetuate itself). The goal of the benevolent humanitarians who had such great influence on Indian policy in the nineteenth century was assimilation of the Indians into the general American citizenry. The solution to dependency/paternalism was seen to be the vanishing of the Indians by absorption into the dominant white Christian society of the nation. When the Indians were thus assimilated, reformers repeated, again and again, there would be no “Indian problem” because there would no longer be any Indians. The Indian Bureau, charged with care of the Indians through its varied programs, would then disappear. While the horse clunked Indian Life in the Southwest and on the plains, Europeans in other regions introduced ideas, technologies, and trade practices that had major impacts on Native life, in fact, as the author demonstrates, the mere presence of European neighbors altered nearly every facet of tribal society (Taylor, and Sturtevant). This analysis examines the social, economic, and political bases of eastern coastal groups for nearly two centuries. It demonstrates how the growing presence of colonists changed tribal life so completely. What the author seems justified in labeling the result a "'New World for the Indians, European diseases first swept through Native villages, killing thousands. Then kinship systems broke down, languages disappeared, and political leadership shilled as even the basics of everyday file needed restructuring (Barker). With a formed eye for detail, the author shows how and why these tilings occurred. This discussion places the Indian, experiences at the center of Native and newcomer exchanges (McMaster, and Trafzer). By the end of the essay, he has illustrated the variety of methods Indians developed to ensure their own survival through peaceful relations with their white neighbors. There is of course a mixing of the different ethnical groups, for example through intermarriages, but only to a certain degree. In most cases it is very simple to tell a Hispanic from a White, a Black from an Asian and an Indian from all the others. In big cities like New York, the segmentation can clearly be seen by everybody; there is, for instance, a Chinatown, a Little Italy. Ghettos full of Black people and outside the cities are reservations full of Indians. Frequent wars between the United States and various groups of Indians punctuate the narrative of American history, these varied widely from local, minor dashes to major campaigns with hundreds of casualties and deaths. Conflicts between the Ankara villagers and other Americans in South Utikola had lead the nations to the Indian war beyond the Mississippi River (Brown). The clash did not occur because of land-hungry pioneers or handed federal negotiators. Rather it illustrates the multilayered complexity of dealing with Native people and suggests that intruding whites had little interest or skill in understanding Indian motivations. American colonists on the eve of the Revolution shared a common identity that set themselves apart from Britons elsewhere. The New World settlers had forged a society and culture from multi-ethnic elements (English, Dutch, German, Irish and other Europeans), affected also by contact with native Americans and African slaves. A sense of destiny beckoned front the hire of a spacious frontier. The recent victory in the French and Indian War, the culmination of a long dud for a continent, left impressions of proud land invincibility. If challenged to defend against external encroachment upon their liberties, Americans were capable of translating their commonality into independence and union. Early post-1965 Indian Americans mostly practiced Hinduism in their homes, sometimes with other local Hindu families. Occasionally, these families would rent or purchase houses and community spaces to observe Hindu rituals, ceremonies, anti holidays. The first traditional Hindu temple was built in 1977 in New York City. Since then, Hindu temples have been bulk throughout the Untied States, often facing resistance from local residents who, unfamiliar with Hinduism, fear the traffic, noise, and development that the building of temples might bring. Once built, Hindu temples are often vandalized, sometimes with expressions of anti-Hindu hate, such as graffiti containing racial slurs. Nevertheless, Indian American community leaders argue that key characteristics of the Republican Party repel Indian Americans, namely its Christian values, white male interests, and contemporary record of racist comments, including former Republican Senator George Allen's use of the word “macaco” (monkey) to refer to Indian American Democratic aide (S. R, Sidarth in 2006). Moreover, many Indian Americans, mostly Hindu, disapprove conversions to Christianity. Indian Americans' prevalence in traditionally democratic cities and states may also explain its strong preference for Democrats. California Attorney General Kamaia Harris is a Democrat, as are Congressman Ami Bern, recent Congressman Raj Goyle (in office 2007-11), and Maryland legislators Kumar Rarve, Aruna Miller, and Sam Arora. They are among the 10 Indian American Democrats who ran for political office in 2010. Most Indian Americans practice Hinduism. However, the Indian American community represents all major religions practiced in India. In 2012, the community was 51 percent Hindu, 13 percent Christian and Catholic, 10 percent Muslim, 5 percent Sikh, and 2 percent Jain. It is less than 1 percent Buddhist, 0.5 percent Zoroastrian, and 0.01 percent Jewish.( http://www.firstpost.com/india/india-has-79-8-percent-hindus-14-2-percent-muslims-2011-census-data-on-religion-2407708.html)The first Indian American church was founded in New York in 1971. Since then, the number of Indian American churches has grown to approximately 1,000 (French). They represent different Indian subgroups, languages, and denominations. Indian American Christians also join established U.S. churches. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations in North America (FIACON A) is a large organization with the quintessential North American shaman received supernatural power from one or more spirit helpers during a vision experience and effected cures by communicating while in a trance state with those supernatural. It was the trance that set the true shaman off from the ceremonialist. Subsequent to the spread of horticulture in the Southwest, shamanism and the vision quest were overlaid by the development of annual fertility and rainmaking ceremonials among those tribes most dependent on farming, The Pueblos organized shamanistic curers into sodalities and vested some curing functions in the hands of the priests of the rainmaking sodalities. The most serious diseases were thought to be of supernatural origin, and, of several supposed causes, witchcraft was the most prominent. The belief that disease was caused by intrusion of a foreign object was ubiquitous. The cure by “sucking” or extracting was the most prevalent shamanistic activity. Second in importance was the belief that disease was caused by soul loss. In such cases it was necessary that the shaman identify the witch, defeat him in combat, kill him, and then restore the stolen heart to the patient. The vision quest was generally absent from Pueblo practice. Whatever the reasons for their continuing popular appeal, scholars find that certain aspects of the present American Indian experience do not promote an understanding of national social issues. Indian gaming, for example, which has grown into a multibillion dollar industry since its 1983 inception, has drawn attention throughout the country. Some Americans believe that this business gives Native people an unfair economic advantage over non-Indians. At the same time, some tribal members worry about the potential difficulties posed by organized crime and those social problems related to gambling addiction will merely add to existing reservation issues.

Considering the article by Ihab Hassan, written in 1958, which addresses adolescence as a perpetual state of American literature, we can point out that adolescence is primarily a stage of human development, sometimes regarded as the most difficult stage of existence. Although it is a stage involving a huge amount of energy and emotional effort, it is a necessary evil.

As Hassan (1958) mentions, adolescence is a common theme in American literature and around the world. Considering that, according to this author, he comments on a certain change in this state of grace, a continuous look towards the future, an autoreflexive return to an American dream to be revised. In the following, we will review some of the cultural aspects of native American literature. Hassan's article was written in 1958 when, following the extermination and resettlement policies of 1953, there was another massive and disproportionate loss of American native property to create reserves by moving them to urban areas adapted to the modern society. However, this was just another step in a series of public policies that sought to turn Indians into Americans, the latter being defined according to the values of Western individualism and liberalism; the actual drive of such policies stemmed from the same colonial frame of mind that stereotyped the Indian as uncivilized, backward-looking, and, finally, doomed to vanish. To illustrate this, Scott Richard Lyons makes a historical analysis of the ideology that underpined other Indian exclusion policies in America; the "inclusion" of the Indian in history, a history whose meaning was seen as linear and progressive, actually equated with its exclusion from the American Dream by stereotyping the Indian as primitive, uncivilized, the brutish savage or alternatively as Noble Savage, but in both cases the Indian was declared a breed that must, necessarily, "civilize" or disappear. In 1969, when the occupation of Alcatraz and the former federal prisons there by a group of Indian activists / protesters named Indians of All Tribes took place, the American public was surprised not just by the protest movement, we are in the turbulence of the '60s, with the courageous civil rights moves, but, as Jace Weaver says, the great surprise was that the Indians still exist. The 1969 activist moment, as well as the publication of House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, opened the cultural movement called Native American Renaissance (Kenneth Lincoln). The significance of these remarks is that in concrete terms, with regard to the American Indians, there was a moment of shock, a necessary revision of the American dream that Ihab Hassan spoke, and it became obvious once again that the American dream was built in a way that did not take into account possible social and cultural damage.

The phenomenon of postcolonialism expresses totalitarian colonial (and neo-colonial) construction, with the exclusion of minority groups that include indigenous nations. This process results in the need for postcolonial theory in the analysis of ethnic literature, including the literature of Native American Renaissance. Some authors (Cheyfitz) suggest that although the relationship between American Indians and postcolonialism has strengths and weaknesses, postcolonial theory is needed in the study of contemporary American literature. Cheyfitz talks about the American (post) colonial status, in the idea that although US citizens, the American Indians continued to be considered colonists. The problem is accentuated, as Loomba says, by colonial discourses that deeply influence literature, injustice and inequality, as well as racism, as McClintock says. There are also critics of the need for postcolonial critical theory such as Churchill's, according to which postcolonialism is essentially a Western cultural discourse, applied to the Indians, and so cultural colonization (as Russell Means would say, "the same old song of Europe ").

Adolescence is a process often dealt with as the theme of Native American writers. Authors like Rudolfo Anaya have emphasized their own life experience in the opera and became famous with the novel Bless me, Ultima. The novel that deals with the topic of human training, the impact of the young man on the injustice of life shows maturity as a complex process. Buildungsroman is a creation of Western literature, capturing both Europe from the past century and America, the theme being in one form or another through several literary genres: classicism, romanticism and modernism, today even postmodernism is interesting for this type of novel (Cuddon). Adolescence is a process with its own stages and history. It requires support and understanding to determine the emotional and moral substratum of the future adult. The model treated in literature is that of a journey, from humble origins to the social success of the individual through his effort; of course, this journey includes both rebellion and conformism, because, ultimately, success is a social one. Autobiography is a subdivision of buildungsroman, which can also be fictional, of a character that tells its development. The two novels in our theme are about the journey to maturity. In Flight is the journey in time, while True Diary drives the theory into space. We also mean that from the point of view of the definition of bildungsroman, our Indian heroes are even heroes "standard" or anti-heroes: first because they are Indians, so they are automatically excluded as supposedly broken people by history. Also, both of the main heroes are not just young people of humble origins, but also certain issues that, in my opinion, have more significance for the Indian as excluded. Zits comments that having acne is related to Indian status, and Arnold is ill, but his illness is not represented from the perspective of the person with disabilities, but rather under the sign of the excluded Indian; they are physical characteristics that symbolize a status. Yet, the two youngsters, like any teenager from anywhere, go through a process, events that can subsist on the "journey" specific to bildungsroman, but with nuances that derive from their "indifference". William Bevis was talking about the journey back home in the native American literature after 1969, a concept called "homing in". Well, in the two novels by Sherman Alexie, the route is not that, on the contrary – Zits does not have a reservation as a house and Arnold leaves it; however, there is what could be interpreted as a reconstruction of the idea of home, in the sense of building identity as an Indian, not as something else – Zits is adopted, or rather adopted by himself father, who is white and representative of authority, is an Indian gesture of authority rather than white and not the other way round, and Arnold succeeds in the whites world, but only as Indian. It is important to mention in relation to the autobiography that Arnold Krupat's observation about Indian autobiography is valid, namely that we always have a collective autobiography, unlike an autobiographical autobiographical autobiography in the West's cultural space where it was invented. At each step, the events of the two young people's "justify" by being Indian, their occurrences are specific, including the orphan's situation (Zits's mother dies of cancer "because of" the suffering that she was left and is left to Zits' Indian father is alcoholic, and is overwhelmed by the idea that his son will grow violently in alcoholism as an anesthetic "solution" to the historical trauma of being Indian in America) or poverty for both, which derives from the status of Indian. These would be similarities and differences in bildungsroman and autobiography as the fundamental literary genres of the West; you can argue, in the sense of James Ruppert, that there is also a "mediation" in Sherman Alexie, as in other Native American Renaissance American authors, the use of some "colonial" literary genres to introduce / represent the status of the colonized, the aim being to make this status understandable, legible, to access the trauma by telling it about it. In the two novels, trauma and the possibility of healing are noted. It has been criticized that all contemporary Indian-American literature is about a regeneration process. The legitimate question may be which aspect we can cure. Nancy Van Styvendale proposes healing of the trauma of history and Root proposes insinuating trauma. Studies of the collective trauma specific to the Indians derive from an individual trauma that has its theoretical foundation at the appropriate Freud whose victim can never be called. Finally, we specify that Sherman Alexie is a fine analyst of the trauma of the American people and the regeneration process that has not yet been completed today. To illustrate this, we detail a fragment of poetry , which illustrates this concern in particular:´´I'm going to reverse this earth/ And give birth to my mother/Because I do not believe/That she was ever adored/I want to mother the mother/Who often did not mother me/I was mothered and adored/By mothers not my own/And learned how to be adoring/By being adored.'' (You Do not Have To Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie is published by Little, Brown).

§CAPITOLUL I. SHERMAN ALEXIE – FROM BULLIED KID TO FAMOUS WRITER

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. was born on October 7, 1966, in Wellpinit, Washington, from a Coeur d’Alene father and a Spokane mother, and spent his childhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation, west of Spokane (Sherman Alexie, wikipedia.org). As a child, he lived “surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and disease” (Cline, www.pshares.org), his father working as a truck driver and his mother as a clerk. Despite having six children, Alexie’s father was an alcoholic and went missing for days, while the boy’s mother had to raise money by sewing, to support all the children. Alexie was born with a terrible disease that caused his brain to be filled with a high amount of cerebrospinal fluid and underwent surgery at only six months old, with very low chances of survival. However, the surgery proved successful, even if side effects like enlarged skull, seizures and bed-wetting haunted him during most of his childhood. These particularities of his image and behavior caused mockery and bullying from the other children in the reservation (Grassian 1-2).

The treatment he received from the other children resulted in his detachment from them and escaping in books and education, “reading every book in the Wellpinit School library by the time he was twelve”(Grassian 2). In fact, Jeff Berglund states in his introduction to Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays that the future writer learned to read at only three and that his attraction to books finds its roots in no other than his own alcoholic father’s passion for reading (Berglund xi). With the help of books he also understood the value of humor as a means of both surviving the harsh treatment and self-empowerment (Grassian 2).

Sherman Alexie went to the local school in Wellpinit until eighth grade, after which he transferred to a school in Reardon, Washington, that was frequented only by white children. Despite his feelings of isolation caused by being the only Indian boy, young Alexie surprisingly managed to adapt to life there, and became a successful student thanks to both his intellectual and athletic abilities. A spectacular basketball player in the high school team and class president, Alexie graduated from high school with honors and began college at Gonzaga University in Spokane, in 1985, hoping to become a doctor (Grassian 2-3). According to the website Biography in Context, the fresh college student “was overwhelmed by the grotesqueries in anatomy classes. He switched to law, but found that unpleasant as well” (Sherman Alexie, galegroup.com). His inability to find something that suits him went hand in hand with his growing tendency to drink on their way to college abandon. Moving to Seattle and working as a busboy, he had a revelation after he was robbed at knifepoint. This event was a turning point in his life, as it made him rethink the course of his life and continue his studies, this time at Washington State University (Grassian 3). Here, he took a course of creating writing with Alex Kuo, a poet of Chinese-American background (Sherman Alexie, wikipedia.org) and in an interview, Alexie acknowledges him as the beginning of his writing career:

“I wrote through high school and college and all that, with essays and some creative stuff, but it wasn’t until I took a poetry class at Wazzu [Washington State University, Alexie’s alma mater] with Alex Kuo—that did it, and it was him. His love of literature and liberal politics and poetry of all kinds really did it. He was a father figure, and everybody wants to please their daddy” (A Conversation with Sherman Alexie, bluemesareview.org)

In Kuo’s class, Alexie read for the first time what will have been the book that opened his eyes and mind towards writing and literature – Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back – ananthology of Native American poetry written by Joseph Bruchac (Grassian 3). In the afore mentioned interview, Alexie confesses that this book was so important to him because it made him remember the first book that he related to when he was a child, The Snowy Day:

“The Snowy Day, the picture book by Ezra Jack Keats, which talked about an urban black kid wandering alone in a snowy city. Number one, it was him being a brown-skinned kid, which, back then, there was very little brown-skinned kids’ literature. And also the way he wandered alone, lonely, and okay with the loneliness—that was me. I really saw myself in the book. And it didn’t happen again for years. I mean, I always loved reading, but I felt outside of the books, like an eyewitness rather than a participant. So it didn’t happen again until I read in college Songs from This Earth on Turtle’s Back, which was an anthology of contemporary Native poetry, and I had that moment again. And by connecting to Native literature, it taught me how to connect to non-Native literature in a new way” (A Conversation with Sherman Alexie, bluemesareview.org).

In 1991, Alexie finished his studies at Washington State University and in 1992, Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish a collection of his poems in a volume known as The Business of Fancydancing. The book received positive response from the critics – James Kincaid from New York Times called him “one of the major lyric voices of our time” – and having this boost after his first publication, it was easy for the author to make himself remarked in the literary world with more valuable pieces of writing. 1993 brought to public two more poetry books – I Would Steal Horses and First Indian on the Moon. 1995 was the year when Alexie would present something new to his readers, a piece of fiction called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven followed up by his first novel Reservation Blues (Grassian 3-4). Altogether, Alexie had nine collections of poems, one memoir, four novels and five collections of short stories published until 2017 (Sherman Alexie, wikipedia.org).

Knowing his childhood experiences and reading his work, it is clear that Alexie uses his own life as a source of inspiration for his writing. However, despite being a highly appreciated writer by the large public, the Indian community is not proud of its representative. Biography in Context writes that Mikki Samuels, a librarian at the Salish-Kootenai College on the Spokane Reservation explained to Timothy Egan in the New York Times Magazine that "what people on the reservation feel is that he's making fun of them. It's supposed to be fiction, but we all know who he's writing about. He has wounded a lot of people" (Sherman Alexie, galegroup.com). As a response to this accusation, we can use Alexie’s own words: “If I write, it’s an Indian novel. If I wrote about Martians, it would be an Indian novel. If I wrote about the Amish, it would be an Indian novel. That’s who I am” (Grassian 7). Perhaps these honesty and transparency were exactly the reasons why he became such a successful writer.

In his works, Sherman Alexie shows more interest in themes like race and poverty rather than nature, a typical theme for Indian American literature. In fact, he convincingly declares in several interviews that he despises this “nature shit” (A Conversation with Sherman Alexie, bluemesareview.org) and his exact anger against it helps create such meaningful works: "Anger without hope, anger without love, or anger without compassion are allconsuming. That's not my kind of anger. Mine is very specific and directed" (Ron McFarland: General Criticism on Sherman Alexie, modernamericanpoetry.org). In a 2009 interview with Heather Purser – she herself a Native American who confesses her hatred for the author for daring to say the truth and who herself went through exactly the experiences Alexie writes about – the author is probably the most straightforward as he has ever been and in very few words, he reveals the secret of his success:

“’How are you able to understand yourself enough to write about where you’re from?’ […]‘I don’t care,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I don’t care what people on the rez think.’ ‘But what about the elders, your aunts, your uncles—?’He cut me off. ‘I don’t care. I mean, you can’t, and if you do, you can’t write about it. You have to write about something else’” (Purser, Sherman Alexie, How Do You Dare to Tell the Truth?). Another trait that is visibly characteristic to this author is humor.

In a post on Twitter in 2014, Sherman recognizes the possible presence of his art in the chicano movement. Here's a few more details about this. In many ways, this was an indigenista movement that bore the characteristics of other indigenista movements in Latin America: it was led by mestizos who created a mythology around the grandeur of the Indian past as a means of claiming for themselves a place in contemporary society (Lomelí, and Shirley). The writers of the "Movimiento" issued proclamations about Aztlan, the place of origin of the Aztecs, which came to signify the Chicano homeland or the Southwest. The "Flan Espiritual de Aztlan" espoused the concept of "brotherhood" or camalismo, a spirit vchich characterized the literature of the "Movimiento" with its heavy emphasis on male heroes as portrayed in the best known poem of the period. The origins of Chicano history date back to the twelfth century, when the Mexican Indians (a Nahuatl word pro- pounced "meshics," from which the word "mextcan" is derived, and from which in turn, the word "melchicano" originates) abandoned the Island of Aztlan in search, according to legend, of the place promised them by the gods. In 1321, after a long pilgrimage, they founded the city of Tenochtitlan (today Mexico City), on an islet in Lake Texcoco located in the Anahuac Valley. Years later, when the Aztecs (the people of Aztlan), conquered the greater part of Mesoamerica, their king Moctezuma II- huicamina (who governed from 1440 to 1469), desirous of discovering the origin of his people, sent his sorcerers and wizards in search of the place abandoned by his an¬cestors. Fray Diego. History demonstrates that every colonial society that attains independence lays claim to the cultural legacy of their ancestors. This has been the case of Spanish-Armed can countries, Canada, the United States, India, etc.Basing our ideas on this reasoning, we shall begin the history of Chicano literature, the literature that is part of the cultural legacy of the Chicano people, with the works of those intrepid cronistas (chroniclers) who gave us the first images of the inhabitants of America, their life and environment in the years when the first explorers and colonists arrived. We will conclude these brief notes on colonial poetry with two poems never before included in the histories of pre-Chicano literature(Vasquez). We also hint at the importance of dreams in Indian cultures because “a deeper level of experience is uncovered but elsewhere her dreams are triggered by a momentary feeling of harmony with nature and turn into the sort of drowsiness(Velie). Duran, in his Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana Idas de Tierra (History of the Indies of New Spain and Islands of Terra Pinna), a work com-pleted in 1581, relates that the messengers found Aztlan, the region also known as Chicomostoc (seven caves), to the north of the terithory. In our century, during the decade of the '60s the Chicanos, that is to say, the people of Mexican origin who live in the United States, motivated by nationalist ideals, gave the name of Aztlan to the tern- lories belonging to the Mexican Republic prior to 1848American’s aspects regarding ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds should be knowledgeable about and respectful of one another's cultures, in which literature is a vital part. According to the latest census, Hispanics (especially Americans of Mexican descent) have become the largest minor¬ity group in the United States. It is therefore compelling that we study the literature of this rapidly growing segment of the U,S. population. It was also unique because the politics of those times wore characterized by mass protest specifically aimed at the resolution of policy debates traditionally limited to estab-lished institutions. Young people had never before taken to the streets by the thousand to dramatically challenge those institutions responsible for the perpetuation of racial inequality at home and military intervention abroad. The literature about the 1960s and in particular about student radicalism and protest has encreased in recent years(Briggs et al.). The labels “Latino” and "Hispanic” are used by members of all three cohorts, both as more ethnically inclusive terms and sometimes in place of a more specific ethnic term, in spite of the fact that they may be referring only to Americans of Mexican descent. However, many members of the Chicauo Movement Cohort have strong feelings about these terms, particularly “Hispanic.” The continuity of chicano language and habits, even after violent colonization, is evident in the view of some authors.

Sherman Alexie is a Native American born to a Coeur d'Alene father and a mother of the Spokane Nation. Alexie grew up on a reserve near Seattle, Washington in the western United States. He writes poetry as well as novels, short stories and even scripts. His collection of short stories Phoenix, Arizona was also adapted to film in 1998 under the title The Secret of the Ashes (Smoke Signals) by director Chris Eyre; it is the first film made, produced, written and performed by Native Americans (Campbell). He made himself known for his novel Indian Killer (1997), a contemporary drama about the legend of a Native American killer. Alexie describes the contemporary misery of his people, the material and spiritual deprivation of young Indians and the ravages of alcohol and drugs (McGovern, and White). Her autobiographical novel of childhood and youth literature entitled The Crying First Lost (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2007. Some verses of his poem Tribal Ceremony are quoted in the film Jimmy P., directed by Arnaud Desplechin in 2013.He lives in Seattle today and writes mainly on Amerindian populations. Native American born of a father of the Coeur d'Alene tribe and a mother of the Spokane tribe, Sherman He made himself known for his Indian Killer novel in 1997, a contemporary drama about the legend of an Indian killer. He writes poetry as well as novels, short stories, plays and even film scripts. His book Phoenix, Arizona was also adapted to the screen by director Chris Eyre in 1998; it is the first film made, produced, written and performed by Indians. Alexie grew up on a reserve near Seattle, Washington in the western United States(Campbell). Sherman is undoubtedly one of the most singular and talented contemporary American writers, author of several novels and collections of short stories including Ten Little Indians (2004), all published by Albin Michel. His work has been crowned many times and he received the National Book Award in November 2007. The narrator is a young fifteen-year-old Indian orphan who lives in Seattle("Happy Birthday, Sherman Alexie – The Arts Partnership"). He never knew his father, was lugging from home to orphanage, from host family to the street where he ended up living. This is where he links his destiny with a white teenager of his age, who calls himself Justice, full of anger and resentment towards the world and society, they decide to rob a bank downtown. But things will go wrong and at the time of losing his life, the hero finds himself projected in time to resurface (first) in the body of an FBI agent, in the 1970s, at the time of on the Red River Indian Reserve. This is just the first stop on a journey through America's violent past, driving the reader from the battle of Little Big Horn to the September 11 attacks .A trip that will also give this young orphan the opportunity to search for his own identity as that of his father. At the same time brilliant, violent and funny, Michael, call me Michaël draws a politically incorrect portrait of the United States, fractures of the past like those of the present, of what separates the beings, the families, the sexes, the races and generates hate, fanaticism and terrorism(Konigsberg).

Sherman Alexie is one of North America's most prized writers, we mention only some of the most prestigious awards he won: the O. Henry Award – for a particularly valuable story – in 2005, won by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Elizabeth Stuckey-French, the newborn PEN / Amazon.com Short Story Award in 2000, the Shelley Memorial Award – given to him by the literary organization Poetry Society of America – in 2001 and the Writers Exchange in 2001. He was a member of the Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2006 and worked as a screenwriter at the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Independent Feature Films West – now abbreviated as Film Independent. In 2005 he was sworn in for the Rae Award.His works are full of details taken from his life experience with Native Americans. The most significant short stories are collected in The Best American Short Stories (2004), published by Lorrie Moore: the abundance of details, the color derived from them and given to the stories, the profound moral and the experience of these stories have been rewarded with the Pushcart Prize.He has written some articles, published by the journal Ploughshares, in 2000 and 2001. As a novelist he has distinguished himself above all in the field of adventure novels. The work The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was selected for the National Book Award, a young and sustained section in an attempt to win the award from the local newspaper The Seattle Times. It is important to say that his are not novels of formation, since an ancient Indian saying, very similar to the same applicant in almost all cultures and ethnic groups – as he recalled – says: who is born in one way, does not die in the other.

§CAPITOLUL II.THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN

2.1.Plot Summary

The narrator tells us the story of Oscar, his best friend dog. His family is too poor to afford veterinary care, so the narrator's father shoots the puppy. The child is, of course, devastated.The junior begins High School Reardan, where he meets the hot blonde Penelope and is harassed by the sportsman Roger. Around this time we also learn that the full name of our narrator is Arnold Spirit, younger. Finally, Arnold resists Roger and punches him in the nose. Roger does not resist, but begins to respect Arnold. Born in a Spokane Indian Reservation, Arnold Spirit – and Junior – has to fight poorly with illness, poverty and the fact that it is different in a society that does not (know) how to grasp the differences(Slethuag).Because he realizes he has no future if he stays in the reserve school, he decides to make an unexpected gesture for a fourteen-year-old Indian kid: he moves to a white school, stirring the fury of his tribe and his old friend, Rowdy. Although he wakes up among richer men than himself, he falls in love with him, he makes friends, enters the first basketball team of the school, and knows all the stupid agitation of adolescence. Based on the author's personal experiences and complemented with great inspiration from Ellen Forney's memorable illustrations, the full story of a half-time Indian is a very funny and wonderful book that will last for a long time.The narrator presents himself to us: he is a hydrocephalic, meaning he was born with water on the brain. He is also a burgeoning artist and hopes to use his words to unite with people. Arnold hears cute blonde Penelope disgusting in the school bathroom one day and learns she is anorexic. The two become close, even going together to the winter dance. Although he has passed like the middle class, Penelope discovers that Arnold is poor and complains. They become the semi-girlfriend and boyfriend and Arnold's desires after her with a passion. We meet then the best friend of the narrator, a tough guy named Le Voyou. The thug spends quite a bit of time with the narrator's family, since his own is abusive. The two go to a meeting together where the Junior (one of our narrator's names) gets roughed up a bit and the Thug has to step in. We see that Thug is the main protector of the Junior. Advancing, the Junior is at school one day and finds his mother's name written in a geometry textbook. Exasperated, he throws the book at his teacher, Mr. P. After he is suspended from school, Mr. P comes to visit and tells Arnold never to give up. He encourages Arnold to leave the reservation (Pavan).

Thus, Junior is twice a renegade: the Spokane Indians see him as a traitor because he chose to attend the Reardan school classes and his new colleagues and teachers are trying to marginalize him just because he is … different. The fully true diary of a half-time Indian is one of the most powerful examples of how words and images can work together to convey more than conventional text. However, the author is criticized for the red-to-treat themes which have come to be considered clichés(Allen). For example, we are dealing with: the best friend who disagrees with the decision of the protagonist and makes his life bitter, only to come to terms at the end; the bully of the school that is not a bully, but a man of great soul; the alcoholic father and the most beautiful girl in school who at first has prejudices to the protagonist but ends up falling in love with him. The completely true diary of a half-time Indian was a real surprise to the genre he is part of, being a narrative with such a powerful message that the subject of racism is more than just a decoration item. Even if the characters are not obvious, it's an easy reading, sprinkled with Sherman's characteristic humor. The events follow quickly, ensuring the alert rhythm of the novel, propelling the reader's attention rather to the action of the characters. Even though it is a work largely intended largely for the young audience, the author knew exactly how to use this extremely sensitive subject, and not only presented it in a way that would be even understood by the smallest of the readers, but made it stand out exactly as it really is: neither more nor less than a bunch of prejudices of a group of people with limited thought(Banks). It is interesting to note how the author distributes "hatred" for the protagonist both among the whites and especially in the community that the boy betrayed.

Arnold takes Mr. P's advice seriously and tells his parents that he would like to be transferred to the White School in Reardan. The parents of the Junior are good with the idea, but the Voyou, the best friend of the Junior, is totally upset. The thug is so upset that he punches the Junior's face. Both become more enemies than friends. The reservation Indians also avoid the Junior for his choice.Arnold also becomes friends with a child named Gordy who is school engineering. A total brainiac, Gordy teaches Arnold how to really read a book and other joys of learning. During the last half of the book, Arnold suffers a series of losses: first his grandmother is hit by a drunk driver, so his dad's best friend Eugene is shot in the face at 7-11. These are all alcohol-related crashes as is the death of his sister Mary, who dies in a caravan fire. One way Arnold can cope with all the pain is by learning to embrace his joy – which he does by making lists. By commuting between Wellpinit and Reardan, Arnold begins to look like a part-time Indian. He is Junior on the ground, where he is a reprobate and at school in Reardan he is Arnold. After a conversation with his father, Arnold decides to try for basketball. With a little encouragement from the Coach, he makes the team. During the first basketball game against his old school, Arnold is booed, bombarded with a quarter and the crowd turns their backs on him. The Rogue then hits him in the head and Arnold falls unconscious. In the return match, however, Arnold's team wins and he feels a bit guilty – the kind of the same he played on Goliath's side instead of David.

The end of the book is reconciliation between the Thug and Arnold. They play a one-on-one basketball game. The thug tells Arnold that Arnold is a nomad and accepts the fact that Arnold left the reservation. Meanwhile, Arnold has decided that he is multi-tribal. He found a way to look at himself that is not only based on "white" or "Indian". It belongs to many different tribes (Rothenberg).

At a brief inspection of the novel I found that abounding funny and well-done illustrations. This is the first strength of the book: how text and illustrations coexist in harmony, perfecting the reading experience. Some drawings were simply brilliant in their ridiculousness; others were surprised by their complexity and attention to detail, and most had the role of providing extra information about some characters without loading the text with unnecessary paragraphs, thus keeping the alert rhythm of reading.

2.2.Adolescence and its Flaws

2.3.Reservations – Homes to Bloody History

2.4.Leaving the reservation and becoming a traitor

2.5. When teenage meets race

2.6.Losing original identity and understanding/accepting the new one

§CAPITOLUL III. FLIGHT THEMES

3.1.Plot Summary

3.2.Present connected to past: a spiritual journey through history

3.3.Flight themes – stereotypical images of Native Americans

3.4.Self-acceptance as a result of understanding the past

§CONCLUSION

§REFERENCES

Primary resources:

Sherman Alexie "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian"

Sherman Alexie "Flight"
Secondary Sources:
– Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays (Jeff Berglund, Joan Roush)
– Understanding Sherman Alexie (Daniel Grassian)
– Mapping a History of Adolescence and Literature for Adolescents (Greg Hamilton)
– Not Exactly: Intertextual Identities and Risky Laughter in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (Adrienne Kertzer)
– The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory (Sheldon Stryker, Peter J. Burke)
– The Youth Lens: Analyzing Adolescence/ts in Literary Texts (Robert Petrone, Sophia Tatiana)
– Facing the Fire: American Indian Literature and the Pedagogy of Anger (Jeffrey Berglund)
– "Open Containers": Sherman Alexie's Drunken Indians (Stephen F. Evans)
– Intergenerational Trauma: A Look at Sherman Alexie's Child Characters (Kiersten Sargent)
– THE AMERICAN INDIAN HOLOCAUST: HEALING HISTORICAL UNRESOLVED GRIEF
(Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Ph.D. and Lemyra M. DeBruyn, Ph.D.)
– Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash and the Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature (Mandy Suhr- Sytsma)
– Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in
Blood (Sherman Alexie)
– Reflections on Intergenerational Trauma: Healing as a Critical Intervention (Ashley Quinn)
– “We’re All the Same People”?: The (A)Politics of the Body in Sherman Alexie’s Flight (Kerry Boland)
– Beyond 9/11: Trauma and the Limits of Empathy in Sherman Alexie’s Flight (Lydia R. Cooper)
– Adding a Disability Perspective When
Reading Adolescent Literature: Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Bryan Ripley Crandall)
– The Efficacy of Humor in Sherman Alexie’s Flight : Violence, Vulnerability, and the Post-9/11 World (Joseph L. Coulombe)
– Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels
(Stef Craps, Gert Buelens)
– Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All
There Is? (Lawrence Grossberg)

• Grassian, Daniel. Understanding Sherman Alexie.University of South Carolina Press. Columbia, South Carolina, 2005.

• Berglund, Jeff, Roush, Jan. Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays. The University of Utah Press.Salt Lake City, 2010.

• Cline, Lynn. About Sherman Alexie: AProfile. Ploughshares at Emmerson College, 2000. https://www.pshares.org/issues/winter-2000/about-sherman-alexie-profile

• Sherman Alexie. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie

• Sherman Alexie. Authors and Artists for Young Adults, vol. 28, Gale, 1999. Biography in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1603000488/BIC1?u=iulib_iupui&xid=f89602f0

• A Conversation with Sherman Alexie. Blue Mesa Review, December 6th, 2012. http://bluemesareview.org/issues/issue-26/a-conversation-with-sherman-alexie/

• Ron McFarland: General Criticism on Sherman Alexie. Modern American Poetry. http://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/content/ron-mcfarland-general-criticism-sherman-alexie

• Purser, Heather. Sherman Alexie, How Do You Dare to Tell the Truth?. July 07, 2009. Yes! Magazine. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/sherman-alexie-how-do-you-dare-to-tell-the-truth

"Happy Birthday, Sherman Alexie – The Arts Partnership". The Arts Partnership, 2018, http://theartspartnership.net/artspulse/happy-birthday-sherman-alexie/. Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering The Feminine In American Indian Traditions.. Beacon Press, 1986.

Banks, Wishelle. "The Native Voice". Sherman Alexie's Official Homepage, 1995, http://fallsapart.com/art-nv.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

Barker, Chris. Making Sense Of Cultural Studies. SAGE, 2002.

Briggs, Vernon M et al. The Chicano Worker.University Of Texas Press, 1979.

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West. Henry Holt And Company., 2011.

Campbell, Duncan. "Profile: Sherman Alexie". The Guardian, 2018, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/jan/04/artsfeatures.fiction. Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary Of Literary Terms And Literary Theory. Wiley-Blackwell, A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication, 2013.

French,, L.A. Psychoactive Agents And Native American Spirituality: Past And Present. Contemporary Justice Review, 2014, p. p. 155.

Konigsberg, Eric. "Sherman Alexie: A Native Son With No Borders". Nytimes.Com, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/books/21alexie.html.Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

Lomelí, Francisco A, and Carl R Shirley. Chicano Writers. Gale Group, 1999.

McGovern, Thomas F, and William L White. Alcohol Problems In The United States. Taylor And Francis, 2014, p. 157.

McMaster, Gerald, and Clifford E Trafzer. Native Universe. National Museum Of The American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, In Association With National Geographic, 2004.

Pavan, Mandavkar. "Indian Dalit Literature Quest For Identity To Social Equality". Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews Vol.: 3 (2), Pp.60-69, no. Vol.: 3 (2), 2015, pp. pp.60-69.

Rothenberg, Jerome. Shaking The Pumpkin.Traditional Poetry Of The Indian North Americas -. Station Hill, 2014.

Slethuag, Gordon E. Hurricanes And Fires: Chaotics In Sherman Alexie’S Smoke Signals And The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven. Literature Film Quarterly, 2003.

Sturgeonenglish.com, Sturgeonenglish.com. Sturgeonenglish.Com, 2018, http://www.sturgeonenglish.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/13602064/the-absolutely-true-diary-of-a-part-time-sherman-alexie-1.pdf.Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

Taylor, Colin F, and William C Sturtevant. The Native Americans.Salamander, 2004.

Vasquez, Richard. Chicano.Harpercollins E-Books, 2014.

Velie, A. R. "American Indian Literature: An Anthology.". Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, no. ISBN 0-8061-2345-1, 1991, p. 375., Accessed 10 Mar 2018.

http://www.firstpost.com/india/india-has-79-8-percent-hindus-14-2-percent-muslims-2011-census-data-on-religion-2407708.html

Loomba, Ania. Postcolonial Studies And Beyond. Duke University Press, 2005.

McClintock, James I. Nature's Kindred Spirits. University Of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

§APPENDIX

Source:(Sturgeonenglish.Com)

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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE

SPECIALIZATION: AMERICAN STUDIES

Title: Growing up an Indian in the American Society: Looking for Identity in two of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

Coordinating Professor,

Prof.univ. dr.

Cornelia Vlaicu

Student:

Denisa-Mădălina Olaru

2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

§Introduction……………………………………………………………………………

§Capitolul I. Sherman Alexie – from bullied kid to famous writer…………………..…

§Capitolul II.The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian…………………………..

2.1.Plot Summary…………………………………………………………………………..

2.2.Adolescence and its Flaws……………………………………………………………..

2.3.Reservations – Homes to Bloody History……………………………………………..

2.4.Leaving the reservation and becoming a traitor……………………………………….

2.5. When teenage meets race……………………………………………………………..

2.6.Losing original identity and understanding/accepting the new one…………………..

§Capitolul III. Flight themes…………………………………………………………………

3.1.Plot Summary………………………………………………………………………….

3.2.Present connected to past: a spiritual journey through history………………………..

3.3.Flight themes – stereotypical images of Native Americans…………………………..

3.4.Self-acceptance as a result of understanding the past…………………………………

§Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..

§References……………………………………………………………………………………

§Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………….

Growing up an Indian in the American Society: Looking for Identity in two of Sherman Alexie’s Novels

§INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theme of identity as a Native American in the American society. Native Americans have become a field of interest for me after I visited such a community in the Grand Canyon. Seeing them in person for the first time not only impressed me through the remote way they lived from the rest of society, but also made me want to learn more about them – their race, their history and their present. Questions like “how did they end up living so far from civilization”, “how can they support themselves” or “why don’t they move from the Grand Canyon” popped up in my head immediately. However, even with all these questions floating in my brain and not being able to answer them, I could still see happiness in their eyes, a kind of happiness caused by living a simple life.

Only a few months later, after I started reading about these people, have I understood that their present is still strongly connected to their past and that their way of life is deeply rooted in ancient customs and traditions, and this is the reason why it is so hard for this race especially to adapt and function in the American society in our day and age. After I decided to do my diploma paper on this topic, Sherman Alexie was the author that really caught my attention on this matter. Not only did his way of writing about Indians attracted me, but also the fact that he himself is one of them. The two novels that I chose to analyze and interpret are The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian and Flight, as they both depict the lives and struggles of teenage boys who are looking for their identities and are trying to make their way among Americans. However, the two novels differ in some aspects – one refers to the identity of a single person, while the other is deeper and more philosophical in the sense that through the eyes of a young boy and through fantastic “dreams” that depicted real events, it brings to attention the identity of an entire race, which was built after many bloody battles and painful happenings. I believe that studying them together would be an appropriate way to show what Indian identity means both or the individual and for the entire race.

This paper will be composed by three parts. The first will be dedicated to the author because it is important to have some biographical information about him in order to have a better understanding of the themes present in the two novels. The second part will refer to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the last one to Flight. Each of the last two parts will begin with the summary of each novel, in order to have a clear idea of the story and then, I will continue with theoretical aspects about topics like adolescence, history or race in order to have a background and a starting point. This will also help us put the stories in a context and understand the idea of reservations and the actual situation of Native Americans. Following theory, I will also have practical sections where I will focus on the main characters and I will analyze and interpret their behaviors and how they develop by the end of the stories.Through the course of this paper I will use several secondary sources to strengthen my arguments.

The first systematic reporting of factions among American Indians occurred in Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes, edited by Ralph Linton (1940). In touching on Northern Arapahoe factionalism Henry Elkin described the individuals chosen to serve on the tribe’s modem council as characterized by personalities considerably different from the traditional type. Instead of traditional values, councilmen put a premium on an ability to understand and to deal with officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result, “every choice of a councilman, and indirectly, every evaluation of an individual, involves conflicting standards of recognition, a perplexity inevitably resulting in social malaise. In the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, this movement to acculturate, assimilate, and Americanize the Indians was the single force dominating federal Indian affairs. There were only a few nay-sayers, a mere handful of perceptive men who saw that it would be difficult if not impossible to achieve the goals of the assimilationists (Cuddon). On the part of the Indians there were varied responses—withdrawal, armed resistance, passivity—but in the end, the tribesmen were subordinated to the power of the United States. At the beginning of the settlement, people had the mission of forming a new "ethnical group". They saw the American continent as a place where they could live together, not next to each other, a place where it did not matter where they came front and what they were in their "old" life. They thought it to be a place of a new beginning and a very important part of the American dream is expressed in the theory of the melting pot. It is said that America is a place where people from different races, countries, or social classes come to live together to form a new race. Culture and traditions, as well as the specification of a people, were supposed to melt together to form something new and something better. American Indian policy was not an end in itself (even though it might be argued that the bureaucracy in which the paternalism was embodied tended to perpetuate itself). The goal of the benevolent humanitarians who had such great influence on Indian policy in the nineteenth century was assimilation of the Indians into the general American citizenry. The solution to dependency/paternalism was seen to be the vanishing of the Indians by absorption into the dominant white Christian society of the nation. When the Indians were thus assimilated, reformers repeated, again and again, there would be no “Indian problem” because there would no longer be any Indians. The Indian Bureau, charged with care of the Indians through its varied programs, would then disappear. While the horse clunked Indian Life in the Southwest and on the plains, Europeans in other regions introduced ideas, technologies, and trade practices that had major impacts on Native life, in fact, as the author demonstrates, the mere presence of European neighbors altered nearly every facet of tribal society (Taylor, and Sturtevant). This analysis examines the social, economic, and political bases of eastern coastal groups for nearly two centuries. It demonstrates how the growing presence of colonists changed tribal life so completely. What the author seems justified in labeling the result a "'New World for the Indians, European diseases first swept through Native villages, killing thousands. Then kinship systems broke down, languages disappeared, and political leadership shilled as even the basics of everyday file needed restructuring (Barker). With a formed eye for detail, the author shows how and why these tilings occurred. This discussion places the Indian, experiences at the center of Native and newcomer exchanges (McMaster, and Trafzer). By the end of the essay, he has illustrated the variety of methods Indians developed to ensure their own survival through peaceful relations with their white neighbors. There is of course a mixing of the different ethnical groups, for example through intermarriages, but only to a certain degree. In most cases it is very simple to tell a Hispanic from a White, a Black from an Asian and an Indian from all the others. In big cities like New York, the segmentation can clearly be seen by everybody; there is, for instance, a Chinatown, a Little Italy. Ghettos full of Black people and outside the cities are reservations full of Indians. Frequent wars between the United States and various groups of Indians punctuate the narrative of American history, these varied widely from local, minor dashes to major campaigns with hundreds of casualties and deaths. Conflicts between the Ankara villagers and other Americans in South Utikola had lead the nations to the Indian war beyond the Mississippi River (Brown). The clash did not occur because of land-hungry pioneers or handed federal negotiators. Rather it illustrates the multilayered complexity of dealing with Native people and suggests that intruding whites had little interest or skill in understanding Indian motivations. American colonists on the eve of the Revolution shared a common identity that set themselves apart from Britons elsewhere. The New World settlers had forged a society and culture from multi-ethnic elements (English, Dutch, German, Irish and other Europeans), affected also by contact with native Americans and African slaves. A sense of destiny beckoned front the hire of a spacious frontier. The recent victory in the French and Indian War, the culmination of a long dud for a continent, left impressions of proud land invincibility. If challenged to defend against external encroachment upon their liberties, Americans were capable of translating their commonality into independence and union. Early post-1965 Indian Americans mostly practiced Hinduism in their homes, sometimes with other local Hindu families. Occasionally, these families would rent or purchase houses and community spaces to observe Hindu rituals, ceremonies, anti holidays. The first traditional Hindu temple was built in 1977 in New York City. Since then, Hindu temples have been bulk throughout the Untied States, often facing resistance from local residents who, unfamiliar with Hinduism, fear the traffic, noise, and development that the building of temples might bring. Once built, Hindu temples are often vandalized, sometimes with expressions of anti-Hindu hate, such as graffiti containing racial slurs. Nevertheless, Indian American community leaders argue that key characteristics of the Republican Party repel Indian Americans, namely its Christian values, white male interests, and contemporary record of racist comments, including former Republican Senator George Allen's use of the word “macaco” (monkey) to refer to Indian American Democratic aide (S. R, Sidarth in 2006). Moreover, many Indian Americans, mostly Hindu, disapprove conversions to Christianity. Indian Americans' prevalence in traditionally democratic cities and states may also explain its strong preference for Democrats. California Attorney General Kamaia Harris is a Democrat, as are Congressman Ami Bern, recent Congressman Raj Goyle (in office 2007-11), and Maryland legislators Kumar Rarve, Aruna Miller, and Sam Arora. They are among the 10 Indian American Democrats who ran for political office in 2010. Most Indian Americans practice Hinduism. However, the Indian American community represents all major religions practiced in India. In 2012, the community was 51 percent Hindu, 13 percent Christian and Catholic, 10 percent Muslim, 5 percent Sikh, and 2 percent Jain. It is less than 1 percent Buddhist, 0.5 percent Zoroastrian, and 0.01 percent Jewish.( http://www.firstpost.com/india/india-has-79-8-percent-hindus-14-2-percent-muslims-2011-census-data-on-religion-2407708.html)The first Indian American church was founded in New York in 1971. Since then, the number of Indian American churches has grown to approximately 1,000 (French). They represent different Indian subgroups, languages, and denominations. Indian American Christians also join established U.S. churches. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations in North America (FIACON A) is a large organization with the quintessential North American shaman received supernatural power from one or more spirit helpers during a vision experience and effected cures by communicating while in a trance state with those supernatural. It was the trance that set the true shaman off from the ceremonialist. Subsequent to the spread of horticulture in the Southwest, shamanism and the vision quest were overlaid by the development of annual fertility and rainmaking ceremonials among those tribes most dependent on farming, The Pueblos organized shamanistic curers into sodalities and vested some curing functions in the hands of the priests of the rainmaking sodalities. The most serious diseases were thought to be of supernatural origin, and, of several supposed causes, witchcraft was the most prominent. The belief that disease was caused by intrusion of a foreign object was ubiquitous. The cure by “sucking” or extracting was the most prevalent shamanistic activity. Second in importance was the belief that disease was caused by soul loss. In such cases it was necessary that the shaman identify the witch, defeat him in combat, kill him, and then restore the stolen heart to the patient. The vision quest was generally absent from Pueblo practice. Whatever the reasons for their continuing popular appeal, scholars find that certain aspects of the present American Indian experience do not promote an understanding of national social issues. Indian gaming, for example, which has grown into a multibillion dollar industry since its 1983 inception, has drawn attention throughout the country. Some Americans believe that this business gives Native people an unfair economic advantage over non-Indians. At the same time, some tribal members worry about the potential difficulties posed by organized crime and those social problems related to gambling addiction will merely add to existing reservation issues.

Considering the article by Ihab Hassan, written in 1958, which addresses adolescence as a perpetual state of American literature, we can point out that adolescence is primarily a stage of human development, sometimes regarded as the most difficult stage of existence. Although it is a stage involving a huge amount of energy and emotional effort, it is a necessary evil.

As Hassan (1958) mentions, adolescence is a common theme in American literature and around the world. Considering that, according to this author, he comments on a certain change in this state of grace, a continuous look towards the future, an autoreflexive return to an American dream to be revised. In the following, we will review some of the cultural aspects of native American literature. Hassan's article was written in 1958 when, following the extermination and resettlement policies of 1953, there was another massive and disproportionate loss of American native property to create reserves by moving them to urban areas adapted to the modern society. However, this was just another step in a series of public policies that sought to turn Indians into Americans, the latter being defined according to the values of Western individualism and liberalism; the actual drive of such policies stemmed from the same colonial frame of mind that stereotyped the Indian as uncivilized, backward-looking, and, finally, doomed to vanish. To illustrate this, Scott Richard Lyons makes a historical analysis of the ideology that underpined other Indian exclusion policies in America; the "inclusion" of the Indian in history, a history whose meaning was seen as linear and progressive, actually equated with its exclusion from the American Dream by stereotyping the Indian as primitive, uncivilized, the brutish savage or alternatively as Noble Savage, but in both cases the Indian was declared a breed that must, necessarily, "civilize" or disappear. In 1969, when the occupation of Alcatraz and the former federal prisons there by a group of Indian activists / protesters named Indians of All Tribes took place, the American public was surprised not just by the protest movement, we are in the turbulence of the '60s, with the courageous civil rights moves, but, as Jace Weaver says, the great surprise was that the Indians still exist. The 1969 activist moment, as well as the publication of House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, opened the cultural movement called Native American Renaissance (Kenneth Lincoln). The significance of these remarks is that in concrete terms, with regard to the American Indians, there was a moment of shock, a necessary revision of the American dream that Ihab Hassan spoke, and it became obvious once again that the American dream was built in a way that did not take into account possible social and cultural damage.

The phenomenon of postcolonialism expresses totalitarian colonial (and neo-colonial) construction, with the exclusion of minority groups that include indigenous nations. This process results in the need for postcolonial theory in the analysis of ethnic literature, including the literature of Native American Renaissance. Some authors (Cheyfitz) suggest that although the relationship between American Indians and postcolonialism has strengths and weaknesses, postcolonial theory is needed in the study of contemporary American literature. Cheyfitz talks about the American (post) colonial status, in the idea that although US citizens, the American Indians continued to be considered colonists. The problem is accentuated, as Loomba says, by colonial discourses that deeply influence literature, injustice and inequality, as well as racism, as McClintock says(McClintock, 1996:39) . There are also critics of the need for postcolonial critical theory such as Churchill's, according to which postcolonialism is essentially a Western cultural discourse, applied to the Indians, and so cultural colonization (as Russell Means would say, "the same old song of Europe ").