By Sherman Alexie
I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which
villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor the means by which I
obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was 3 years old, a Spokane
Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern
Washington state. We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually
managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by
reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of
irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.
My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on purpose,
was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangster epics,
basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought his books by
the pound at Dutch’s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village. When he
had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and
hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in crazy piles in
the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a fit of unemployment-inspired creative
energy, my father built a set of bookshelves and soon filled them with a random
assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam War and
the entire 23-book series of the Apache westerns. My father loved books, and since I
loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.
I can remember picking up my father’s books before I could read. The words
themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first
understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn’t have the
vocabulary to say “paragraph,” but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held
words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had
some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me. I
began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small
paragraph within the United States. My family’s house was a paragraph, distinct from the
other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south and the Tribal
School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate
paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother.
At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that Superman comic book. Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue and narrative was a three-dimensional paragraph. In one panel, Superman breaks through a door. His suit is red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces. I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that “Superman is breaking down the door.” Aloud, I pretend to read the words and say, “Superman isbreaking down the door.” Words, dialogue, also float out of Superman’s mouth. Because he is breaking down the door, I assume he says, “I am breaking down the door.” Once again, I pretend to read the words and say aloud, “I am breaking down the door” In this way, I learned to read.
This might be an interesting story all by itself. A little Indian boy teaches himself
to read at an early age and advances quickly. He reads “Grapes of Wrath” in kindergarten when other children are struggling through “Dick and Jane.” If he’d been
anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a
prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity. He
grows into a man who often speaks of his childhood in the third-person, as if it will
somehow dull the pain and make him sound more modest about his talents.
A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and
non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay
quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were
Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations
inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic
reading in school but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs. They
were monosyllabic in front of their non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories
and jokes at the dinner table. They submissively ducked their heads when confronted by
a non-Indian adult but would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As
Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were
ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.
I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into
the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then during
lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read
books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or basketball games. In shopping
malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as many books as I could. I
read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the
books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the
newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal
offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I
read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and
desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was
trying to save my life.
Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was going to be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visit schools
and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the reservation school
system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories or novels. I was certainly
never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Writing was something
beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time that a guest teacher visited the reservation.
There must have been visiting teachers. Who were they? Where are they now? Do they
exist? I visit the schools as often as possible. The Indian kids crowd the classroom.
Many are writing their own poems, short stories and novels. They have read my books.
They have read many other books. They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant
wonder. They are trying to save their lives. Then there are the sullen and already
defeated Indian kids who sit in the back rows and ignore me with theatrical precision.
The pages of their notebooks are empty. They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare
out the window. They refuse and resist. “Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I throw
my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am
lucky. I am trying to save our lives.
Los Angeles Times “The Joy of Reading and Writing” 1998