Ten Little Indians - Hardcover

Alexie, Sherman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117449 ISBN 13: 9780802117441

Publisher: The Grove Press, 2003

Synopsis

With Ten Little Indians Sherman Alexie offers nine new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heart-rending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and who they love.

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Reviews

Adult/High School-Nine extraordinary short stories set in and around the Seattle area, featuring Spokane Indians from all walks of urban life. In "The Search Engine," a student of English poetry stumbles upon a book of poems by another member of her tribe and goes on a vision quest to find him. But no brief description does justice to the rich complexity of this story or the others; adjectives such as incisive, ironic, emotional, political, tragic, triumphant, angry, loving, exuberant, and wise come to mind, and Alexie puts everything together in a deceptively casual, often dazzling way. In bursts of exposition, using colloquial language and uncensored thoughts, he creates characters so richly layered and situations so colorfully detailed that readers finish each tale with a feeling of having encountered a real person or event. They include a woman caught in a terrorist attack; a homeless, alcoholic man on a quest to recapture his grandmother's lost regalia; a lawyer who pays too high a cost for being too focused on his ambition; and a feminist mother, as remembered by her adult son. Woven throughout are themes that satirize Native American images, such as the great storyteller and the spiritual master; yet even as the characters are self-deprecating about these stereotypes, Alexie slyly, in unexpected ways, ultimately demonstrates their truth. Those familiar with this author's earlier work will find his charm, originality, and sheer humanity in full measure here.
Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fluent, exuberant and supremely confident, this outstanding collection shows Alexie (The Toughest Indian in the World, etc.) at the height of his powers. Humor plays a leading role in the volume's nine stories, but it's love, both romantic and familial, that is the lens through which Alexie examines his compelling characters. His range stretches from the strange to the poignantly antic. In "Can I Get a Witness" an Indian woman is caught inside a restaurant when a suicide bomber blows himself up; in "Do Not Go Gentle" a father buys a vibrator dubbed "Chocolate Thunder" and uses it as a spiritual talisman to successfully bring his seriously injured baby out of a coma. In one of the book's finest stories, "The Search Engine," Corliss Joseph, an intrepid 19-year-old Spokane Indian college student, finds an obscure 1973 volume of Indian poetry and tracks down the author, an aging forklift operator with painful memories of his foray into the literary world. Basketball looms large in a number of these stories, from the thoughtful "Lawyer's League" to the superb final entry, "What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?" Loose, jaunty and salted with long, hilarious, inspired riffs-"What kind of life had she created for herself? She was a laboratory mouse lost in the capitalistic maze. She was an underpaid cow paying one-tenth mortgage on a three-bedroom, two-bath abattoir"-these are still cohesive, powerful narratives, expanding on Alexie's continuing theme of what it means to be an Indian culturally, politically and personally. This is a slam dunk collection sure to score with readers everywhere.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Spokane author Alexie's latest set of short stories is an appealing, intelligent collection that not only challenges white culture's stereotypes of Native Americans but also shows them grappling with their own assumptions about themselves and others. In "The Search Engine," sharp college student Corliss discovers a 30-year-old book of poems written by a Spokane man in her school's library. Neither she nor her family has ever heard of the man, Harlan Atwater, so she decides to track him down. Atwater rebuffs her at first, but then tells her the story of his only two poetry readings. "Can I Get a Witness?" is the powerful story of a dissatisfied, middle-aged Spokane woman who manages to survive the bombing of the restaurant where she was eating lunch. Wandering dazed, she meets a young man and shocks both of them with what she says and does in the aftermath. The narrator's mother in "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above" bolsters the self-esteem of insecure white women, much to her son's chagrin. "With difficulty, I still loved my mother, but she found blind acceptance from her white friends," he observes, as he ponders his mother's attachment to these women. Whether they are tough and determined like Corliss, at war with themselves like Richard (the man preparing for a political career in "Lawyer's League"), or at a crossroads like the woman in the restaurant, Alexie's characters are both memorable and introspective. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: The Grove Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802117449
• ISBN 13: 9780802117441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243