The Business of Fancydancing refers to Alexie’s first collection, a collection of five short stories and forty poems. His writings portray the balance Native Americans must find between their tribal traditions on their reservation and the Western environment found outside their reservation lands. Alexie uses the Spokane/Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservation at Wellpinit in eastern Washington to describe this conflict. Alexi writes in a way that resonates with all minorities in the United States. His writing articulately details the tremendous struggles that many minorities face in our modern world.
The book is structured with three specific sections titled: “Distances,” “Evolution,” and “Crazy Horse Dreams.” “Fancydancing”, from which Alexie derives his title, refers to the ritualistic tribal dances through which major elements of the history and tradition of Native Americans are communicated. These traditional dances are performed in elaborate costumes decorated with the feathers of rare birds and with ornaments …show more content…
Simon, in a talk with Thomas when they are both drinking, contends that Point A is where a person is and Point B is where that person ought to be: If Point A, for example, is drunk, Point B is drunker. As Thomas stands in the cold talking about this idea, Simon comes weaving down the road in his car, jumps the curb, plows through a shrub, and parks directly behind Mary Song’s vehicle. Mary screams at him, telling him to get his truck away from her vehicle. He agrees, backing his truck all the way down the street until he hits a utility pole and disrupts electrical service. As sparks fly, “crawling along the grass like blind snakes,” Simon observes that “electricity is just lightning pretending to be permanent,” a line that accurately describes the relationship that Native Americans have to nature, using it freely and often in their literature and
The book is structured with three specific sections titled: “Distances,” “Evolution,” and “Crazy Horse Dreams.” “Fancydancing”, from which Alexie derives his title, refers to the ritualistic tribal dances through which major elements of the history and tradition of Native Americans are communicated. These traditional dances are performed in elaborate costumes decorated with the feathers of rare birds and with ornaments …show more content…
Simon, in a talk with Thomas when they are both drinking, contends that Point A is where a person is and Point B is where that person ought to be: If Point A, for example, is drunk, Point B is drunker. As Thomas stands in the cold talking about this idea, Simon comes weaving down the road in his car, jumps the curb, plows through a shrub, and parks directly behind Mary Song’s vehicle. Mary screams at him, telling him to get his truck away from her vehicle. He agrees, backing his truck all the way down the street until he hits a utility pole and disrupts electrical service. As sparks fly, “crawling along the grass like blind snakes,” Simon observes that “electricity is just lightning pretending to be permanent,” a line that accurately describes the relationship that Native Americans have to nature, using it freely and often in their literature and