Sherman Alexie Stereotypes

“I grew up in a storytelling culture, a tribal culture, but also in an American storytelling culture.”- Sherman Alexie. This tells us that he was born and raised through a storytelling and tribal culture, which was his Native American side. Although they lived on the reservation their traditions of their ancestors did not fade they learned through telling stories and practicing their traditions. However, he soon leaves the reservation filled with his culture and native roots to go to an American school and learns another way of life and stories. Life between two worlds is not easy, pulling different ways and always having something to make life hard and miserable for him was his challenge throughout his life. His life on the reservation and …show more content…
For example, in the paragraph Second Grade it explains how his teacher “Betty Towles” tries to teach Sherman Alexie respect. It shows us in the paragraph how she tries her best to make him crack, but all the effort she uses and tries on him were all for nothing. In the end she sends a letter to his parents telling them to cut his braids off or make him stay home from class, his parent come to school with their braids instead. As they walked through she said without capitalization “Indians, Indians, Indians.” This is one example of showing prejudice and negative stereotyping because like what happened to the African Americans people did that out of their own selfish reasons and inhuman customs. It also shows her dislike for Native Americans because they are different. Another example is when a white girl that he kisses later gets raped by her foster father. When people hear the news people said as if that happened all the time “Just Indians, being Indians.” By reading through the whole story we continue seeing people, see Native Americans as stereotypes and judge them …show more content…
In fact this title refers to more than just formal schooling. We learn in the beginning, during his seventh grade year he decides to move to an all-white high school. The reason for his decision is because Indian education does not expose enough opportunities to Native Americans as the white people do. We can identify many implications for this title, for example, white people could be using schooling to destroy their culture and ways like they did to the Hawaiians. In addition, people might view their education as a still uneducated because they do not learn the things the white people do. Many white people seem to see Native Americans as uneducated savages. As he leaves the reservation he writes that “No one spoke to me for another five hundred years.”although he was not spoke to a lot before it seems that people got mad at giving him the cold shoulder. This hyperbole showed us how his people felt as if they were being