“Superman and Me” 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 is breaking 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.
