You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
by Sherman Alexie
2017
Weight:2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

Sherman Alexie is another one of those authors that I love and trust enough to just buy anything he publishes whenever I come across it.  I was introduced to him by an Agnes Scott professor named Dr. Guthrie, and I have been fascinated by him ever since.  I was out with my mom and Harriet recently when I found this one on the New Arrivals table at Barnes and Noble.  I did not have the $22.40 + tax to spare, but I could not talk myself out of it.  I am not suppose to be getting more books.  I am suppose to be letting go of all the books.  My wife will tell you that I am not doing a good job and that they are still stacked up high all around the basement.

I am glad I did not talk myself out of buying it.  I am almost reluctant to let it go, but I want someone else to enjoy it, and I know I will not have time to re-read it anytime soon.  It is a beautiful book about grieving, identity, parents, family, Sherman, loss, gains, race, genocide, power, weakness...it is about Sherman and his mother and his sisters and his father and his mother's rapist and his sister's rapist and his wife and his friend...Shall I go on?  It is a mix of fiction interwoven with nonfiction.  Poems with stories with powwow chants.

It is well worth a read.  Enjoy it!

War Dances

War Dances by Sherman Alexie
2010
Weight: 7.2 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving at Joe's in East Atlanta Village

Alexie never disappoints.  I was so relieved to pick this one off my shelf.  I knew it would be an easy read in that I would be hooked on each word, would chuckle regularly, and would also find activism in the form of short stories and poetry.  It was an easy read in that the voices of the characters were so well done that I never had to come out of the story for air or to think about what I had just read.  I just lived in the book each moment I got to pick it up.  I am not saying it is the best book by the author, but it was another fine collection by him.  I intend to leave it at the coffee shop unless you let me know that you need some of this in your life.

Indian Killer (1996)
The Toughest Indian in the World (2000)
Sherman Alexie
Weight: 2 lbs
Method of Disposal: I am giving Indian Killer to my mom because I want to know what she thinks about the end. I am giving The Toughest Indian to Yosafa because she wanted a fast, good read.



I was introduced to Sherman Alexie while I was in college, and I have loved his work ever since. I went around to local used bookstores and bought up all of his books immediately following reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for the second time. I may have bought one or two from the bookstore I was working at. I read most of them soon after I got them home, but these slipped by me. I must have become invested in all of my assigned reading and forgot about them, boxed them up, and didn’t notice them again until the last week of March.

I read The Toughest Indian in the World first. I felt like it had been awhile since I read good fiction, and I was not disappointed. As usual, the writing was hilarious, embarrassing, infuriating, and heartbreaking. Alexie so easily works various identities into his stories. He does not shy away from anything. Alcoholism, sexuality, the class war, racism, sexism, any of it. People are beautiful and fat. There are losers and warriors. They are complicated, even in their simplicity.

The last story in the collection, “One Good Man,” was about an Indian man caring for his dying father and, without flourish or delusion, we are torn apart by their relationship. “Dear John Wayne” showed how obscure academia can be in the context of real life, and the parts about John Wayne were hilarious, so sad, and so believable. “The Sin Eaters” came out of nowhere and felt so unusual compared to everything else I had read by Alexie, but it was creepy and, unfortunately, believable. I highly recommend this collection of stories. 5/5 stars. I la la loved it.

Indian Killer was also good, though I did not enjoy it like I do his short fiction. I still started it first thing one morning and finished it that evening. I could not walk away from the story. The racial tensions in the story were overwhelming, brutal, and honest. One act of violence would set of a string of violence and more and more and more. Everyone would react. Hate seeped into every crevice. Everything was complicated and inescapable. Hundreds of years of anger and confusion weighing down each page. The ending, so beautiful—was it a threat? I just finished it, and I am still trying to get a hold of all my thoughts. Maybe 4 out of 5 stars?

Good stuff. I hate to see my Alexie books go. I know I will be reading quite a few of them again, but they will not be my own copies. It is because I love them so much that I am letting them go. I hope the people who receive them enjoy them and, if they don’t, I hope they will pass them on to someone else who will.

Falling Down and Falling Apart

Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
1995
Weight: 11 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating—possibly here : http://www.wpbp.org/pages/book.html or somewhere like it. Donating to women’s prisons was suggested by a friend, and I am definitely interested if I can figure out how to do it.





Sherman Alexie will always hold a special place in my heart. I was first introduced to his writing while attending Agnes Scott College. He was a particular favorite of Dr. Guthrie. The first book of his I read was The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and I loved it. That was required reading for two of my classes over a time frame of four years, and each time I found different words to cling to and various “meanings” depending on where I was at in my own head. In my senior year, I would write one of my final papers about Reservation Blues. I also collected and read everything else I could find by the man while I was in school.

I was really into Reservation Blues when I read it but, unfortunately, I was not yet into Blues. This led for a very disjointed and dull paper on music and the written word. I tried. I read several books on Blues, and I bought the CD Sherman Alexie made with Jim Boyd to coincide with the book. I enjoyed the music and tortured my then-girlfriend with it every time we got into the car. It was much better than the Eddy Clearwater CD I bought for $13, by accident, when I was seeking out the real album. Much better.

The book itself blends together life on a Spokane Indian Reservation, the magical guitar of Robert Johnson, and the desperation of the garage band that brings it all together. As usual, for Alexie, the book is witty, fun to read, hilarious, angry, and heart-breaking. His writing is blunt and to the point, but beautiful. Each word is delivered with force and perseverance. The book is a multi-genre piece with songs, dialogue, music, activism, reality, and history seeping through the pages.