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" Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations. "

Sherman Alexie

Work

Live

American

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" My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac. "

Sherman Alexie

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" I had the feeling I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to be another disappointing Indian. "

" Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy. "

" Don't live up to your stereotypes. "

Sherman Alexie

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" I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators. "

" The people who loved me when I was seven years old love my books, and the people who didn't like me when I was seven years old don't like my books. "

Sherman Alexie

Old

Love

" There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap. "

" You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture. "

" I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it. "

" In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions. "

" I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants. "

" If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time. "

" You want the good life? You live where white people live, you go to school where white people go to school, and you shop where white people shop. "

" My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures. "

" I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there. "

" All art is exploitation. "

Sherman Alexie

Exploitation

Art

" My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel. "

" I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature. "

" Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion. "

" Writing is a lonely business. "

" I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal. "

" I don't have to participate in another culture's ceremonies in order to respect that culture. "

" You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it. "

" I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots. "

" I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed. "

" White Americans have a short memory. "

" When you construct a mix tape, the first song you come out with has to be a barnburner. "