Sherman Alexie

Early life

Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition where an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid builds up in the brain's ventricular system. At six months old, he underwent brain surgery and faced a high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. The surgery was successful, leaving no mental damage but causing other side effects. His parents were alcoholics; his mother eventually achieved sobriety, while his father often left on drinking binges for days.

To support her six children, his mother sewed quilts, worked as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and held other jobs. At the reservation school, he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as "torture" from white nuns, who called him "The Globe" because his head was larger than usual due to hydrocephalus. Until age seven, he had seizures and bedwetting, controlled by strong drugs. Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many rites of passage for young Indian males, so he excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals.

Education

To improve his education, Alexie left the reservation to attend high school in Reardan, Washington, 22 miles away, where he was the only Native American student. He excelled at his studies, became a star player on the basketball team, was elected class president, and was a member of the debate team. His successes won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga University, a Jesuit university in Spokane. He initially enrolled in the pre-medical program hoping to become a doctor, but found he was squeamish during dissection in anatomy classes.

He switched to law but found that unsuitable. Feeling enormous pressure to succeed, he began drinking heavily. Unhappy with law, he found comfort in literature classes. In 1987, he dropped out of Gonzaga and enrolled at Washington State University, where he took a creative writing course taught by poet Alex Kuo, who became a mentor.

Kuo gave him an anthology of Native American poetry, Songs of This Earth on Turtle's Back by Joseph Bruchac, which inspired him.

Sexual harassment allegations

On February 28, 2018, Alexie published a statement regarding accusations of sexual harassment by several women, responding that he had done things that harmed other people and apologizing, while also admitting to an affair with author Litsa Dremousis, one of the accusers, whose specific charges he repudiated. Dremousis said she had an affair with Alexie but remained friends until stories about his sexual behavior surfaced, and claimed numerous women had spoken to her about his behavior.

Her response first appeared on her Facebook page and was reprinted in The Stranger on March 1, 2018; the allegations were detailed in an NPR story five days later. The Institute of American Indian Arts renamed its Sherman Alexie Scholarship as the MFA Alumni Scholarship. The blog Native Americans in Children's Literature deleted or modified all references to Alexie. The American Library Association, which had just awarded him the Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, was reported to be reconsidering, and Alexie declined the award and postponed publication of a paperback version of the memoir.

The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Career

In 1992, Alexie published his first collection of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, through Hanging Loose Press. With that success, he stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree, though he received an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University in 1995. In 2005, he became a founding board member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth.

His stories have been included in anthologies such as The Best American Short Stories 2004 and Pushcart Prize XXIX. His poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, lightened by wit and humor. According to Sarah A. Quirk, Alexie asks three questions across his works: what it means to live as an Indian in this time, to be an Indian man, and to live on an Indian reservation.

Within a year of graduating, he received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. His career began with two poetry collections in 1992, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing, where he uses humor to express struggles with alcoholism, poverty, and racism. He was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by the Beloit Poetry Journal in 1995.