I'm reading a collection of short stories of this very good author, and the stories are indeed very short. Yet I find that occasionally I have to halt mid sentence and rest before I can move on to the next line, sometimes the power of his words is too much to bear. He is blunt and unflinching, looks into the lives of Native Americans and offers it to us so plainly it hurts.
It hurts not because we see the situations he writes about from above, or unrelated to other cultures as our circumstances are so very different; no, it hurst because on the basic level of human existence we all hope for the same things. Some of the people who populate his pages are damaged beyond repair, and some still have some hope. No matter where they are on their journey, he follows them around, and lets us have a peak.
Reading his stories is a humbling experience.
“I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.” Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
“But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.” Sherman Alexie, War Dances.
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