How Did Culture Influence Sherman Alexie's Culture

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Culture is the most influential part of a human’s life and decisions. A Native American author that is greatly affected by his culture is Sherman Alexie. This is shown in his books The Absolute True Diary Of A Part Time Indian, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Indian Killer. ("Sherman Alexie." Authors)
Many of Sherman Alexie’s books are made from real life events that happened to him. Sherman Alexie was born Oct. 07, 1966 in Wellpinit, Washington, to the parents of Sherman Joseph and Lillian Agnes Alexie. Sherman Alexie was born with a condition called hydrocephalic, this lead him to receive brain surgery at six months of age. The doctors doubted that he would even survive the surgery, even if he did he would be impaired for the rest of his life. He survived the surgery and experienced seizures till he was seven were he outgrew it.("Sherman Alexie." Authors) As a child Sherman Alexie would read everything in the Wellpinit school library, while his mother supported the family by selling her hand sewed quilts at the Wellpinit trading post and his alcoholic dad was nonexistent. By eighth grade Sherman Alexie decided that he was going attend school at Reardan High School, which was thirty two miles outside reservation. Alexie used his past to write about his book The Absolute True Diary Of A Part Time Indian, where the main protagonist Arnold Spirit goes through the same exact scenario. Arnold Spirit also had Hydrocephalic and decided to leave the reservation to go to a different school. Sherman Alexie’s short-stories and poetry collections he portrays poverty, alcoholism, and the despair that he lived through living on a Native American reservations.
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He has been praised for writings that evoke sadness and anger yet leave readers with a sense of respect and compassion for characters who are in seemingly hopeless situations. His protagonists were involved with crime, alcohol, or drugs, they struggled to survive with the constant battering of their minds, by their own self-hatred of being powerlessness of living in a Indian reservation. As Alexie wrote in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, “Native Americans have a way of surviving. But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins."("Sherman Alexie." Encyclopedia) This is true for Sherman Alexie because he had survived a lot through his childhood and when he was in college. In college Sherman Alexie started to abuse alcohol After his book Indian Killer, he took a break from writing and went to work on a screenplay incorporating much of the material in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Released in 1998, Smoke Signals was written, directed, and produced by Indians, and also starred Indians. The story revolved around two friends, Thomas and Victor, who embark on a road trip from their reservation in Idaho down to Arizona to retrieve the cremated remains of Victor’s father. Alexie, was married his wife Diane, she is a member of the Hidatsa tribe of North Dakota and they have two children. Their children continue to live on the Spokane reservation. Alexie preferred not to use the term "Native American," and has expressed happiness that he has

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