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Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

By adopting Blues music, Alexie is also acknowledging the shared history of African Americans and Native Americans at the hands of white men. Grassian further argues that Alexie was reclaiming the Blues music for the Native Americans as he suggests that the Blues were actually created by horses (whom Big Mom taught to sing) when after the slaughter of the horses "the song" [they sang] "sounded so pained and tortured that Big Mom could never have imagined it before the white men came" thus Grassian stating that "the blues originated with the colonization of the land and its people".3.
             The lyrics of the first song Reservation Blues (chapter one) also refers to economic and social disadvantages Native Americans faced. The opening line emphasizes (assuming that in accordance with Blues musical lyrics, 'dancing' often was a euphemism for sex) the loneliness as felt by Native Americans as a result of fractured family and community life on the Reservations (not one of the main characters has grown up through functional happy childhoods, Victor being abandoned by both his parents, Junior losing his parents, and as an indirect consequence his immediate family of younger siblings, to drink driving, whilst Thomas and Chess/Checkers both live through alcoholic abuse by their fathers). The following line "It's been so long since someone understood" refers to the inability of some Native Americans and non-Native Americans alike to understand Native American culture and traditions. Certainly Alexie writes that these have "been forgotten by most of the tribe" and that "Most Indians don't follow those rules anymore." Also Alexie writes that "Indian women had never paid much attention to him, because he didn't pretend to be some twentieth century warrior" which again compounds this notion of loneliness but primarily seems to allude to the confusion of Native American culture, in that the Indian women are seeking out a westernized stereotypical Native American man (and also that there must be Native American men who accept and fulfil this pretend role) whereas the traditional Spokane tribe were salmon fishermen.


Essays Related to Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

1. Read The Poems Of Sherman Alexie. Discuss The Themes Of His Poetry And Connect Them To The Novel, Reservation Blues.

... , hunger, alcoholism, sexual frustration; all of these are issues which plague Alexie in his childhood and early adulthood. Issues which are reflected in his novel Reservation Blues. ""I wonder what it's like to be a half-breed kid? How do you think it feels to have a white mom or dad? It must be weird"" (Reservation Blues, 82). One of the major issues that seem to come into ... an alcohol related car accident after leaving a bar and Thomas" father still wanders the Spokane reservation drinking the days away. Though it is common to most cultures and races, it is depicted in Reservation B...

  • Word Count: 804
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

2. Biography of Sherman Alexie

... and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published in 1993, and that was just the beginning. In 1995 he launched his career as a novelist with Reservation Blues, an expanded version of the characters introduced in the previously mentioned collection. In 2007 he published a young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary ... Award, the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Award, the 2007 National Book Award, and the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award (www.fallsapart.com). Alexie is a modern writer who is not bound by a single genre. He has written poetry, novels, screenplays, and most notably short stories. As the dominant Na...

  • Word Count: 1573
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

3. Reservation Blues

In the book Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie the issue of hunger is so prominent it is impossible to ignore. The characters are all greatly affected by hunger. But it is not only hunger that affects these characters, but depravation from appealing food and the feeling of having earned the food as well. Physical hunger is not ... symbolic in American culture and to me they are a sign of white America, not what one would think to find on a reservation. By this I mean even the food of white America is suppressing the Native Americans. The characters in the book Reservation Blues do eat a lot...

  • Word Count: 1274
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Difference between Reservation Blues and Smoke Signals

... ? If that is true, then that point was definitely shattered by Sherman Alexie. Alexie is the author of Reservation Blues, and with his aid, his book was turned into a movie which was called Smoke Signals. Reservation Blues and Smoke Signals can be viewed as the "Ying" and the "Yang". With many similarities and a few differences between the two, Reservation Blues and Smoke Signals have a parallel connection which makes it a must ... of feeling abandon, then he would never overcome that problem to become a better person that he can and needs to be. In Reservation Blues, Victor also feels a...

  • Word Count: 1337
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

5. The theme of Alcoholism in Sherman Alexie

... his collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. Reservation Blues was published in 1995, and Indian Killer followed in 1996. Both have won numerous awards. Indian Killer, by Sherman Alexie, was published in 1996. In this novel, a serial killer is on the loose in Seattle, Washington, scalping his victims, and leaving ... ). He is the one who feeds the whites" generalization of Native Americans as violent drunks. The theme of alcoholism can also be found in short stories by Sherman Alexie and ot...

  • Word Count: 1246
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie's novel, "Reservation Blues," depicts the struggles of Native Americans living on a reservation. Although the story focuses on the lives of a group of teenagers in a rock band, the novel still shows the hardships and setbacks of all the people living on the reservation. Because of the colonization and teachings of white Americans, the Native Americans create a belief that the white man's way of living is better ... to gamble, which only contributes to the ongoing cycle of poverty. Although the American government is supposedly helping the Native Americans, they are only causing...

  • Word Count: 1356
  • Approx Pages: 5

7. Racial Self-Loathing And The Americanization Process

... in presenting how their particular ethnic group deals with the Americanization process. This paper will examine a novel by each of the aforementioned authors and analyze how each one develops the attitude of self-hate in their characters. In Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues a group of Native-Americans form a band and attempt to integrate themselves into mainstream American society. Their ... talent is ultimately overshadowed by their inability to be acceptable Indians. The attitude and perception of Alexie's characters concerning their identity only borders on self-hate. While he ... ...

  • Word Count: 1694
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Grade Level: High School

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