Stories of the University

Paper Assignment #1

Please review the prompts below. All papers in this course must conform to MLA format and guidelines. A brief guide is attached to your syllabus. If you need further information on the format, you may visit

www.Purdue.edu/OWL

or

www.mla.org

. 

Note the deadlines: February 16-19 to submit:

 Thesis Statements and Outlines to be posted on the established Discussion Forum for Paper 1. The 19th is the final date to submit, and if you use research, you must include your works cited.

 Final 4-5 page paper deadline is March 3 – 5th with the 5th the absolute final deadline. 

You have several prompts to choose from for your first writing assignment. 

You are to work with the short readings, which include essays, stories, and poems.

 I want to call your attention to the addition of one more story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker that I have uploaded to the readings folder.  Select works that interest you and you feel comfortable writing on. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I will also address paper questions during the Check-in session scheduled for Wednesday, February 3rd. 

Prompt #1: How does gender impact an individual’s place in the university? Using any one or two of the assigned readings in the course and your own personal experience, write an argument essay that takes a position on the difficulty for a man or woman to handle the same and different pressures faced in courses (be specific) and during his or her academic journey. Define the pressures and cite textual and personal examples that support your position.

Prompt #2: James Thurber’s story “University Days” deals with ways of learning and understanding. One of his central metaphors is “seeing.” How does he use this metaphor throughout the story to reveal the difficulties in the ability to “see”? While some classes are considered difficult and others less so, how does Thurber show the learning curve in each contributing to the whole academic experience?

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Cinderella’s Stepsisters

by Toni Morrison

BACKGROUND
Toni Morrison was the first African American to win the Nobel
Prize for literature. She grew up during the Great Depression,
facing both segregation and racism. This selection is a speech
which Morrison delivered at Barnard College’s 1979 graduation,
during the women’s rights movement. Barnard is an all-women’s
college in New York City.

Let me begin by taking you back a little. Back before the days
at college. To nursery school, probably, to a once-upon-a-
time when you first heard, or read, or, I suspect, even saw
“Cinderella.” Because it is Cinderella that I want to talk to
you about; because it is Cinderella who causes me a feeling
of urgency. What is unsettling about that fairy tale is that it is
essentially the story of a household—a world, if you please—of
women gathered together and held together in order to abuse
another woman. There is, of course, a rather vague absent
father and a nick-of-time prince with a foot fetish.1 But neither
has much personality. And there are the surrogate “mothers”
of course (god- and step-) who contribute both to Cinderella’s
grief and to her release and happiness. But it is her stepsisters
who interest me. How crippling it must have been for those
young girls to grow up with a mother, to watch and imitate that
mother, enslaving another girl. A B

I am curious about their fortunes after the story ends. For
contrary to recent adaptations, the stepsisters were not ugly,
clumsy, stupid girls with outsize feet. The Grimm collection2

1. fetish (FEHT IHSH): irrational devotion.
2. Grimm Collection: reference to the famous collection of fairy tales

compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early nineteenth century.

10

READING FOCUSA

What analogy do you think
Morrison might make with
the Cinderella story?

Based on what you have read
so far, what do you think the
tone of this speech will be?

READING FOCUSB

“Cinderella’s Stepsisters” by Toni Morrison from Ms. Magazine, September, 1979. Copyright © 1979 by Toni

Morrison. Reproduced by permission of the author. No alterations of any type may be made to this selection

without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

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Cinderella’s Stepsisters 221

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describes them as “beautiful and fair in appearance.” When
we are introduced to them they are beautiful, elegant, women
of status, and clearly women of power. Having watched and
participated in the violent dominion3 of another woman, will
they be any less cruel when it comes their turn to enslave other
children, or even when they are required to take care of their
own mother? A

It is not a wholly medieval4 problem. It is quite a
contemporary one: feminine power when directed at other
women has historically been wielded in what has been described
as a “masculine” manner. Soon you will be in a position to
do the very same thing. Whatever your background—rich or
poor—whatever the history of education in your family—five
generations or one—you have taken advantage of what has been
available to you at Barnard and you will therefore have both the
economic and social status of the stepsisters and you will have
their power. B

I want not to ask you but to tell you not to participate in the
oppression of your sisters. Mothers who abuse their children are
women, and another woman, not an agency, has to be willing
to stay their hands. Mothers who set fire to school buses are
women, and another woman, not an agency, has to tell them
to stay their hands. Women who stop the promotion of other
women in careers are women, and another woman must come
to the victim’s aid. Social and welfare workers who humiliate
their clients may be women, and other women colleagues have to
deflect their anger. C

I am alarmed by the violence that women do to each other:
professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence.
I am alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other
women. I am alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the
killing floor of professional women’s worlds. You are the women
who will take your place in the world where you can decide who

3. dominion (DUH MIHN YUHN): rule; control.
4. medieval (MEHD EE VUHL): relating to the Middle Ages, a period in

Western European history from the fifth through the fifteenth centuries.

20

30

40

50

222 Cinderella’s Stepsisters

A VOCABULARY

Academic Vocabulary
How is Morrison trying to
influence, or affect, your
opinion of the Cinderella
story?

B QUICK CHECK

Why does Morrison think
that the story of Cinderella’s
stepsisters is important to the
Barnard graduates?

Underline the loaded words
in this paragraph. What
effect do their connotations
have on the speech?

C READING FOCUS

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shall flourish and who shall wither; you will make distinctions
between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor; where
you can yourself determine which life is expendable and which is
indispensable. D Since you will have the power to do it, you may
also be persuaded that you have the right to do it. As educated
women the distinction between the two is first-order business.

I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our
nurturing5 sensibilities as to our ambition. E You are moving
in the direction of freedom and the function of freedom is to
free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfillment, and
the consequences of that fulfillment should be to discover that
there is something just as important as you are and that just-as-
important thing may be Cinderella—or your stepsister. F

In your rainbow journey toward the realization of personal
goals don’t make choices based only on your security and your
safety. Nothing is safe. That is not to say that anything ever was,
or that anything worth achieving ever should be. Things of value
seldom are. It is not safe to have a child. It is not safe to challenge

5. nurturing (NUR CHUHR IHNG): promoting growth or development.

60

70

© Deborah Feingold/Corbis

LANGUAGE COACHD

The words deserving and
undeserving are antonyms,
or words with opposite
meanings. Underline two
other words in this sentence
that are antonyms.

Word Study
Sensibilities are “sensitive
feelings” or the “ability to
respond emotionally.” Why
does Morrison think that
nurturing sensibilities is
so important?

VOCABULARYE

Write one question you have
so far about this speech.

F READING FOCUS

Cinderella’s Stepsisters 223

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the status quo.6 It is not safe to choose work that has not been
done before. Or to do old work in a new way. There will always
be someone there to stop you. But in pursuing your highest
ambitions, don’t let your personal safety diminish the safety
of your stepsister. A In wielding the power that is deservedly
yours, don’t permit it to enslave your stepsisters. Let your might
and your power emanate7 from that place in you that is nurturing
and caring.

Women’s rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also
a personal affair. It is not only about “us”; it is also about me and
you. Just the two of us. B

80

B READING FOCUS

What is the tone of this para-
graph? Explain whether or
not you think this paragraph
is an effective ending for the
speech.

6. status quo (STAT UHS KWOH): existing state of affairs.
7. emanate (EHM UH NAYT): come from.

Selection Vocabulary
Which selection vocabulary
word best describes how
Morrison views “the safety of
your stepsister”?

VOCABULARYA

224 Cinderella’s Stepsisters

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Applying Your Skills
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1. deflect 2. expendable 3. indispensable

a. give a. indispensable a. heroic

b. take b. unimportant b. crucial

c. repel c. necessary c. expendable

INFORMATIONAL TEXT FOCUS: ARGUMENT: INTENT AND TONE

DIRECTIONS: Complete the chart below by describing Morrison’s intent and

tone in “Cinderella’s Stepsisters” in the boxes on the right.

VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT

DIRECTIONS: Circle the letter of the best synonym (word with a similar meaning)

listed for each vocabulary word.

Cinderella’s Stepsisters

intent

tone

Cinderella’s Stepsisters 225

READING SKILLS FOCUS: QUESTIONING THE TEXT

DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions about “Cinderella’s Stepsisters”:

1. What is Morrison’s overall argument?

2. Is the argument persuasive? Why or why not?

Reading
Standard 2.8
Evaluate the
credibility of
an author’s
argument or
defense of
a claim by
critiquing the
relationship
between
generalizations
and evidence,
the compre-
hensiveness
of evidence,
and the way
in which the
author’s intent
affects the
structure and
tone of the
text (e.g., in
professional
journals,
editorials,
political
speeches,
primary source
material).

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:’,
\

SHERMAN ALEXIE

SHERMAN ALEXIE is a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker known for witty
and frank explorations of the lives of contemporary Native Americans. A
Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Alexie was born in 1966 and grew up on the
Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He spent two years
at Gonzaga University before transferring to Washington State University in
Pullman. The same year he graduated, 1991, Alexie published The Business
ofFancydancing, a book of poetry that led the New York Times Book Review to
call him “one of the major lyric voices of our time.” Since then Alexie has
published many more books of poetry, including I Would Steal Horses ( 1993)
and One Stick Song (2000); the novels Reservation Blues (1995) and Indian
Killer (1996); and the story collections The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven (1993), The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), and Ten Little Indi-
ans ( 2003). Alexie also wrote and produced Smoke Signals, a film that won
awards at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, and he wrote and directed The
Business of Fancydancing (2002), a film about the paths of two young men
from the Spokane reservation. Living in Seattle with his wife and children,
Alexie occasionally performs as a stand-up comic and holds the record for
the most consecutive years as World Heavyweight Poetry Bout Champion.

Indian Education

Alexie attended the tribal school on the Spokane reservation through the
seventh grade, when he decided to seek a better education at an off-reservation
all-white high school. As this year-by-year account of his schooling makes
clear, he was not firmly at home in either setting. The essay first appeared in
Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

First Grade

My hair was too short and my US Government glasses were horn-rimmed,
ugly, and all that first winter in school, the other Indian boys chased me from
one comer of the playground to the other. They pushed me down, buried me
in the snow until I couldn’t breathe, thought I’d never breathe again.

They stole my glasses and threw them over my head, around my out- 2
stretched hands, just beyond my reach, until someone tripped me and sent me
falling again, facedown in the snow.

I was always falling down; my Indian name was Junior Falls Down. Some- 3
times it was Bloody Nose or Steal-His-Lunch. Once, it was Cries-Like-a-
White-Boy, even though none of us had seen a white boy cry.

Then it was a Friday morning recess and Frenchy Si}ohn threw snowballs 4
at me while the rest of the Indian boys tortured some other top-yogh-yaught

105

I
106 Narration

kid, another weakling. But Frenchy was confident enough to torment me all
by himself, and most days I would have let him.

But the little warrior in me roared to life that day and knocked Frenchy to
the ground, held his head against the snow, and punched him so hard that my
knuckles and the snow made symmetrical bruises on his face. He almost
looked like he was wearing war paint.

But he wasn’t the warrior. I was. And I chanted It’s a good day to die, it’s a
good day to die, all the way down to the principal’s office.

Second Grade

Betty Towle, missionary teacher, redheaded and so ugly that no one ever
had a puppy crush on her, made me stay in for recess fourteen days straight.

“Tell me you’re sorry,” she said. 8
“Sorry for what?” I asked. 9
“Everything,” she said and made me stand straight for fifteen minutes, 10

eagle-armed with books in each hand. One was a math book; the other was
English. But all I learned was that gravity can be painful.

For Halloween I drew a picture of her riding a broom with a scrawny cat ll
on the back. She said that her God would never forgive me for that.

Once, she gave the class a spelling test but set me aside and gave me a test 12
designed for junior high students. When I spelled all the words right, she
crumpled up the paper and made me eat it.

“You’ll learn respect,” she said. 13
She sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either cut my 14

braids or keep me home from class. My parents came in the next day and
dragged their braids across Betty Towle’s desk.

“Indians, indians, indians.” She said it without capitalization. She called 15
me “indian, indian, indian.”

And I said, Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am. 16

Third Grade

My traditional Native American art career began and ended with my very 17
first portrait: Stick Indian Taking a Piss in My Backyard.

As I circulated the original print around the classroom, Mrs. Schluter 18
intercepted and confiscated my art.

Censorship, I might cry now. Freedom of expression, I would write in edito- 19
rials to the tribal newspaper.

In third grade, though, I stood alone in the corner, faced the wall, and 20
waited for the punishment to end.

I’m still waiting. 21

•

Alexie /Indian Education 107

Fourth Grade

“You should be a doctor when you grow up,” Mr. Schluter told me, even 22
though his wife, the third grade teacher, thought I was crazy beyond my years.
My eyes always looked like I had just hit-and-run someone.

“Guilty,” she said. “You always look guilty.” 23
“Why should I be a doctor?” I asked Mr. Schluter. 24
“So you can come back and help the tribe. So you can heal people.” 25
That was the year my father drank a gallon of vodka a day and the same 26

year that my mother started two hundred different quilts but never finished
any. They sat in separate, dark places in our HUD1 house and wept savagely.

I ran home after school, heard their Indian tears, and looked in the mir- 27
ror. Doctor Victor, I called myself, invented an education, talked to my reflec-
tion. Doctor Victor to the emergency room.

Fifth Grade

I picked up a basketball for the first time and made my first shot. No. I 28
missed my first shot, missed the basket completely, and the ball landed in the
dirt and sawdust, sat there just like I had sat there only minutes before.

But it felt good, that ball in my hands, all those possibilities and angles. It 29
was mathematics, geometry. It was beautiful.

At that same moment, my cousin Steven Ford sniffed rubber cement from 30
a paper bag and leaned back on the merry-go-round. His ears rang, his mouth
was dry, and everyone seemed so far away.

But it felt good, that buzz in his head, all those colors and noises. It was 31
chemistry, biology. It was beautiful.

Oh, do you remember those sweet, almost innocent choices that the 32
Indian boys were forced to make?

Sixth Grade

Randy, the new Indian kid from the white town of Springdale, got into a 33
fight an hour after he first walked into the reservation school.

Stevie Flett called him out, called him a squawman, called him a pussy, 34
and called him a punk.

Randy and Stevie, and the rest of the Indian boys, walked out into the 35
playground.

1Housing and Urban Development, a US government department.-Eos.

I
108 Narration

“Throw the first punch,” Stevie said as they squared off. 36
“No,” Randy said. 37
“Throw the first punch,” Stevie said again. 38
“No,” Randy said again. 39
“Throw the first punch!” Stevie said for the third time, and Randy reared 40

back and pitched a knuckle fastball that broke Stevie’s nose.
We all stood there in silence, in awe. 41
That was Randy, my soon-to-be first and best friend, who taught me the 42

most valuable lesson about living in the white world: Always throw the first
punch.

Seventh Grade

I leaned through the basement window of the HUD house and kissed the 43
white girl who would later be raped by her foster-parent father, who was also
white. They both lived on the reservation, though, and when the headlines
and stories filled the papers later, not one word was made of their color.

]~t Indians being Indians, someone must have said somewhere and they 44
were wrong.

But on the day I leaned through the basement window of the HUD 45
house and kissed the white girl, I felt the good-byes I was saying to my entire
tribe. I held my lips tight against her lips, a dry, clumsy, and ultimately stu-
pid kiss.

But I was saying good-bye to my tribe, to all the Indian girls and women I 46
might have loved, to all the Indian men who might have called me cousin,
even brother.

I kissed that white girl and when I opened my eyes, she was gone from the 47
reservation, and when I opened my eyes, I was gone from the reservation, liv-
ing in a farm town where a beautiful white girl asked my name.

“Junior Polatkin,” I said, and she laughed. 48
After that, no one spoke to me for another five hundred years. 49

Eighth Grade

At the farm town junior high, in the boys’ bathroom, I could hear voices 50
from the girls’ bathroom, nervous whispers of anorexia and bulimia. I could
hear the white girls’ forced vomiting, a sound so familiar and natural to me
after years of listening to my father’s hangovers.

“Give me your lunch if you’re just going to throw it up,” I said to one of 5!
those girls once.

I sat back and watched them grow skinny from self-pity. 52

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Alexie I Indian Education 109

Back on the reservation, my mother stood in line to get us commodities. 53
We carried them home, happy to have food, and opened the canned beef that
even the dogs wouldn’t eat.

But we ate it day after day and grew skinny from self-pity. 54

There is more than one way to starve. 55

Ninth Grade

At the farm town high school dance, after a basketball game in an over- 56
heated gym where I had scored twenty-seven points and pulled down thirteen
rebounds, I passed out during a slow song.

As my white friends revived me and prepared to take me to the emergency 57
room where doctors would later diagnose my diabetes, the Chicano teacher
ran up to us.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these ss
Indian kids. They start drinking real young.”

Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers. 59

Tenth Grade

I passed the written test easily and nearly flunked the driving, but still 60
received my Washington State driver’s license on the same day that Wally Jim
killed himself by driving his car into a pine tree.

No traces of alcohol in his blood, good job, wife and two kids. 61
“Why’d he do it?” asked a white Washington State trooper. 62
All the Indians shrugged their shoulders, looked down at the ground. 63
“Don’t know,” we all said, but when we look in the mirror, see the history 64

of our tribe in our eyes, taste failure in the tap water, and shake with old tears,
we understand completely.

Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it long enough. 65

Eleventh Grade

Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game 66
against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is
nicknamed the “Indians,” and I’m probably the only actual Indian ever to play
for a team with such a mascot.

110 Narration

This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS 67
LOSE AGAIN.

Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much. 68

Twelfth Grade

I walk down the aisle, valedictorian of this farm town high school, and my 69
cap doesn’t fit because I’ve grown my hair longer than it’s ever been. Later, I
stand as the school-board chairman recites my awards, accomplishments, and
scholarships.

I try to remain stoic for the photographers as I look toward the future. 10

Back home on the reservation, my former classmates graduate: a few can’t 71
read, one or two are just given attendance diplomas, most look forward to the
parties. The bright students are shaken, frightened, because they don’t know
what comes next.

They smile for the photographer as they look back toward tradition. n

The tribal newspaper runs my photograph and the photograph of my for- 73
mer classmates side by side.

Postscript: Class Reunion

Victor said, “Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? 74
My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern.”

. For.a reading quiz, sources on Shermari A Iexie, an(Fannotatedlihks to further
read/ngsonNativ~ Am~ricah education andreservatiOIJ life, visit bec/fordstmartins
~coinlthehedf6rdreadt!t: • · · · ·· U

Journal Writing

Alexie mingles positive and negative school experiences, each seeming almost to
grow out of the other. Write down some of your own memorable school experiences,
positive or negative. Which kind of memories seem to dominate? Are the experi-
ences connected? (To take your journal writing further, see “From Journal to Essay” on
p. 112.)

Alexie I Indian Education 111

Questions on Meaning

1. What overall impression does Alexie create of life on the reservation? Point to
specific EXAMPLES in the text that contribute to this impression.

2. Notice those places in the essay where Alexie describes how Native Americans
face prejudice and negative stereotyping. What does this focus suggest about his
PURPOSE?

3. The title “Indian Education” refers here to more than just formal schooling. What
are some other implications of the title?

4. Alexie refers to his hair in the opening sentence of the essay and in the sections
on second grade and twelfth grade. How, and of what, is his hair a SYMBOL?

Questions on Writing Strategy

1. In this essay Alexie offers thirteen scenes: one for each school grade and a post-
script reunion. Why do you think he set these scenes up in separate sections and
labeled them with headings, instead of, say, running the sections together and
introducing each with a phrase like “During first grade” or “When I was in second
grade”? What is the EFFECT of Alexie’s narrative technique?

2. Each section of the essay ends with a brief paragraph, usually a single sentence.
What common function do all of these conclusions perform? How do their func-
tions vary, and why?

3. How does the section on the seventh grade, almost exactly in the middle of the
essay, serve as a thematic TRANSITION?

4. Why do you think Alexie ends with the section “Postscript: Class Reunion”?
What is the effect of this final image?

5. OTHER METHODS. At several points in the essay, Alexie uses COMPARISON AND
CONTRAST. Locate at least two examples, and explain what each contributes to
the essay.

Questions on language

1. In paragraph 15 Alexie writes that his teacher said of him and his parents” ‘Indi-
ans, indians, indians’ … without capitalization.” What is his point?

2. At the end of the seventh grade section (par. 49), Alexie writes that “no one
spoke to me for another five hundred years.” What does he mean? What is the
effect of this hyperbole? (See Figures of speech in Useful Terms if you need a defi-
nition of hyperbole.)

3. Describe the IRONY in paragraphs 67 and 68.
4. Notice the similarities between the pairs of sentences composing paragraphs 29

and 31 and paragraphs 70 and 72. What point does Alexie make with the simi-
larities?

5. If any of the following words are unfamiliar, be sure to look them up in a diction-
ary: hom-rimmed (par. 1); symmetrical (5); scrawny (11); circulated, inter-
cepted, confiscated (18); ultimately (45); anorexia, bulimia (50); commodities
(53); diabetes (57); valedictorian (69).

112 Narration

Suggestions for Writing

1. FROM JOURNAL TO ESSAY. Write an essay about a particularly memorable aspect of
your life as a student, whether positive, negative, or a mix of both. You might
focus on a single event, a series of events over years, or perhaps an entire school
year. As you relate your story, try to give your personal experience meaning for
your readers.

2. Using Alexie’s essay as a model, write an essay about significant moments that
occurred in your life and that had in common a challenge or a struggle or an
achievement that is or was important to you. You need not organize according to
school years, nor need the events be school related. Do make sure that the com-
mon theme in the events and the significance of each event is clear to readers.

3. One of Alexie’s underlying themes in this essay is the difficulties Native Ameri-
cans often face on reservations. Do some research about the conditions of reser-
vation life. Then write an essay in which you report your findings.

4. CRITICAL WRITING. Alexie is well known for injecting humor, sometimes very
dark humor, into tales that might otherwise be unrelievedly bleak. Where do you
see humor in “Indian Education”? Who or what, if anything, does Alexie poke
fun at? How effective is the humor? Write an essay analyzing Alexie’s use of
humor, focusing your analysis on a single central idea of your own and supporting
it with plenty of examples from Alexie’s essay.

5. CONNECTIONS. Like Alexie’s “Indian Education,” Maya Angelou’s “Champion
of the World” (p. 88) and Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” (p. 94) also report experi-
ences of being culturally and racially different from mainstream white America.
Earlier “Connections” writing topics ask you to compare and contrast Angelou’s
and Tan’s perceptions of what sets them apart from the dominant culture (p. 92)
or their uses of narration to convey their differing POINTS OF VIEW (p. 97). Now
bring Alexie into one of these comparisons with Angelou or Tan or both. Be sure
to use examples from the essays to support your main idea.

Sherman Alexie on Writing

The humor woven into his work sometimes surprises first-time readers
of Sherman Alexie. “One of the biggest misconceptions about Indians is
that we’re stoic,” Alexie told Pam Lambert of People Weekly. “But humor is
an essential part of our culture.” The humor in Alexie’s writing reflects its
role in the lives of contemporary Native Americans, for whom, Alexie told
Doug Marx of Publishers Weekly, “laughter is a ceremony. It’s the way people
cope.”

Alexie does not avoid depicting the poverty, alcoholism, and despair
faced by many Indians. Sometimes criticized by other Indians for portraying
reservation life as hopeless, Alexie responded to Doug Marx: “I write what I
know and I don’t try to mythologize myself, which is what some seem to want,

Sherman Alexie on Writing 113

and which some Indian women and men writers are doing, this Earth Mother
and Shaman Man thing, trying to create these ‘authentic, traditional’ Indians.
We don’t live our lives that way.”

Alexie believes that as an American Indian writer he has a special respon-
sibility “to tell the truth,” as he put it to E. K. Caldwell in another interview.
But, he continued, “Part of the danger in being an artist of whatever color is
that you fall in love with your wrinkles. The danger is that if you fall in love
with your wrinkles then you don’t want to get rid of them. You start to glorify
them and perpetuate them. If you write about pain, you can end up searching
for more pain to write about, that kind of thing, that self-destructive route.
We need to get away from that. We can write about pain and anger without
having it consume us.”

Alexie doesn’t mind being typecast as a Native American writer. Speak-
ing to Joel McNally of The Writer magazine, Alexie said, “If you object to
being defined by your race and culture, you are saying there is something
wrong with writing about your race and your culture. I’m not going to let oth-
ers define me …. If I write it, it’s an Indian novel. If I wrote about Martians,
it would be an Indian novel. If I wrote about the Amish, it would be an Indian
novel. That’s who I am.”

For Discussion

1. What do you think Alexie means by the “Earth Mother and Shaman Man
thing” that he disparages in the work of some Indian writers? Why does he disap-
prove of it? .·

2. Judging from his essay “Indian Education,” how would you say Alexie follows his
own advice to “write about the pain and anger without having it consume us”?

VIA Little, Brown and Company

Eulogy, a Poem by Sherman Alexie

“When she died, we buried all of those words with her”

May 12, 2017  By 

Sherman Alexie

Share:

My mother was a dictionary.

She was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal

language.

She knew dozens of words that nobody else knew.

When she died, we buried all of those words with her.

My mother was a dictionary.

She knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.

She knew words that will never be spoken again.

She knew songs that will never be sung again.

She knew stories that will never be told again.

My mother was a dictionary.

My mother was a thesaurus,

My mother was an encyclopedia.

My mother never taught her children the tribal language.

Oh, she taught us how to count to ten.

Oh, she taught us how to say “I love you.”

Oh, she taught us how to say “Listen to me.”

And, of course, she taught us how to curse.

My mother was a dictionary.

She was one of the last four speakers of the tribal language.

In a few years, the last surviving speakers, all elderly, will also be gone.

There are younger Indians who speak a new version of the tribal

language

.

But the last old-time speakers will be gone.

My mother was a dictionary.

But she never taught me the tribal language.

And I never demanded to learn.

My mother always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”

She was right, she was right, she was right.

My mother was a dictionary.

When she died, her children mourned her in English.

My mother knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.

Sometimes, late at night, she would sing one of the old songs.

She would lullaby us with ancient songs.

We were lullabied by our ancestors.

My mother was a dictionary.

I own a cassette tape, recorded in 1974.

On that cassette, my mother speaks the tribal language.

She’s speaking the tribal language with her mother, Big Mom.

And then they sing an ancient song.

I haven’t listened to that cassette tape in two decades.

I don’t want to risk snapping the tape in some old cassette player.

And I don’t  want to risk letting anybody else transfer that tape to

digital.

My mother and grandmother’s conversation doesn’t belong in the

cloud.

That old song is too sacred for the Internet.

So, as that cassette tape deteriorates, I know that it will soon be dead.

Maybe I will bury it near my mother’s grave.

Maybe I will bury it at the base of the tombstone she shares with my

father.

Of course, I’m lying.

I would never bury it where somebody might find it.

Stay away, archaeologists! Begone, begone!

My mother was a dictionary.

She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years.

She knew words that will never be spoken again.

I wish I could build tombstones for each of those words.

Maybe this poem is a tombstone.

My mother was a dictionary.

She spoke the old language.

But she never taught me how to say those ancient words.

She always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”

She was right, she was right, she was right.

__________________________________

From 

YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME

by Sherman Alexie. Copyright © 2017 by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.

Indigenous languages

language

Little Brown and Company

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mothers and sons

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Sherman Alexie

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me

Sherman Alexie

A National Book Award-winning author, poet, and filmmaker, Sherman has been named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has been lauded by The Boston Globe as “an important voice in American literature.” He is one of the most well known and beloved literary writers of his generation, with works such as The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Reservoir Blues and has received numerous awards and citations, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Fiction and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award.

NewJersey City University

L. Goldberg

Grid for Writing Papers

All papers are based on the literature in the course and will examine the themes. Therefore, a key focal point will be utilizing the literature to develop, to argue, and to support a point of view. Since you will be responsible for several components to incorporate in your writing assignments, outlines should be utilized to plan and to organize effectively your writing assignments. This grid provides an outline and paper format.

Paper #1 Grid

I. Introduction paragraph must include a thesis statement that clearly states the central idea of the paper. This thesis statement must fulfill the following criteria:

A. This statement will be the broadest statement in the paper.

B. This statement will clearly indicate an argument.

C. This statement will provide a point of view.

D. This statement will set clear parameters for what is to be included in the paper.

E. This statement should provide a roadmap to the organization of the paper; for example: “This paper will demonstrate the significance of two minor characters (fill in their names) and prove their roles impact the main character’s (insert name) actions and decisions.” Answer questions: how and why? Compare and contrast these two characters to each other and to the main character. Reveal consequences.

II. The introductory paragraph should include a background explanation to the topic by identifying the literary work or works under examination through the use of

A. Its title in the proper format for the genre (italics or quotation marks)

B. The full name of the author.

C. The date of work.

D. The significance of the literary work and the subject under investigation (thesis).

1. Organization frameworks may follow:

a. Chronological in time

b. Order in terms of sequence of events/incidents in the literature

c. Inductive reasoning: General to specific (least compelling argument builds to the most compelling argument).

d. Deductive reasoning: Specific to general (examples that build to a natural conclusion of the central idea/argument of the paragraph).

e. Using the literature as a guide to sequence in the paper.

f. Relying on breaking down components of the literature such as focusing on plot or character or setting or theme to show how the literary work evolves and changes and concludes (for that component). Ex. How does the setting impact the character? How does the setting contribute to the theme?

2. Use transitions to move effortlessly from one idea to the next, to build and to connect one idea to the next, and to seamlessly move from one paragraph to the next. Each paragraph should build upon the previous one to move the paper forward.

III. Each paragraph in the paper must include a clear topic sentence that states the central idea in that paragraph. Think in terms of the following breakdown:

A. The rubric consists of the following

1. Concept (central idea in the paragraph)

2. Explanation

3. Example

B. The order of the rubric (C-E-E) may be changed by starting with an example, explaining it, and tying it into the overriding concept (think in terms of a mini – thesis) in the paragraph, but all three elements should be included in a paragraph to make a complete and organized whole.

IV. Each paragraph should present cogent reasons and explanations of the paragraph topic.

V. Each paragraph should utilize the literature to illustrate and develop the key point by serving as evidence supporting the central idea including:

A. Quotations (cited);

B. Paraphrased ideas (cited without quotation marks);

C. Specific events or incidents drawn from the literature (cited);

D. Your own explanations of A through C (NOT cited).

VI. Each paragraph must argue the central idea by addressing analytical questions:

A. Why?

B. How?

VII. Think of terms of the reporter hack of the five Ws and one H to make sure your paper has covered them in the best order that serves your paper:

1. Who?

2. What?

3. When?

4. Where?

5. Why?

6. How?