7. Why is Corliss so thrilled by the prospect of another Spokane poet

7. Why is Corliss so thrilled by the prospect of another Spokane poet

ENG 360 Class Discussion: Sherman Alexie (WEEK 1/2)
1. Corliss- 19 year old Spokane Indian college student at Washington State University. Lives
alone: WHY SO? Her explanations are hilarious…what are her reasons?
2. Why do “white people” like Romanticizing Indians, according to Corliss?
- “White people looked at the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the full moon, newborn babies,
and Indians with the same goofy sentimentalism” (11)
3. Alexie (via Corliss’ voice) writes about how Indian Warriors were portrayed in movies and
how they seemed so romantic even though they weren’t Indian at all: she cringes, rather
than feels pride. Why so? What’s the problem (it seems so harmless/positive, even)?
- “I mean, I knew I could never be as brave, as strong, as wiser as visionary, as white as the
Indians in the movies.”
4. Corliss and poetry
Her comments about the man who quotes poetry to get the girls – what is she/Alexie saying
about words, books, intelligence, romance, power, sexuality, everything? How can you
compare with what Elie Shafak says?
• “So maybe she loved poetry precisely because so many people feared it.” (13)
• “Words had always been her weapon, her offense and defence.” (52)
5. Always being an outsider:
She feels more like a white, Jesuit priest (Gerald Manly Hopkins), than any “Spokane” – why
so? How does this sense of always being “outside” affect her negatively? Positively?
- She’s never travelled more than 110 miles from where she grew up, but has large ideas and
ambitions that aren’t fully acknowledged and accepted by her group.
- “Who would ever understand how a nineteen year old Indian woman looked in the mirror
and sometimes saw an old white man in a white collar and black robe?” (15).
6. Corliss and her family/her reading/education
Reading “white books” – are family threatened by her education/of losing her to
something they fear, or simply not able to understand where she is going in life, as they
have no equivalent? (also: “How are you going to get a job with poems?” – Corliss’ mother
asks).
7. Why is Corliss so thrilled by the prospect of another Spokane poet – who’s actually
published? What’s important about finding connectivity with someone one recognizes as
one’s “own”? (Think of something that no one in your family/small town/“your people” have
ever done/been. Now imagine the road for that “first person”…
8. So what’s at the heart of Harlan Atwater’s “issues”? his sense of identity/sense of
belonging?
- “Indians loved to think of themselves as the best storytellers in the world, and maybe they were,
but did they need to be so sure of it?” (13)
- “They looked at me onstage, looking as Indian as I do, with my dark skin and long hair and big
nose and cheekbones, and they didn’t know my poems were just pretend.” (42)
9. THE CONTRADICTIONS she offers (why does Alexie offer contradictions?)
- Learns that Atwater’s birth mother was a crack addict and being adopted by “white” people
could have been the best thing for him.
10. No sense of neat “closure” at the end…why not? What complexity would an “easy” nice
end have cheated us out of?
11. SO: Why is Alexie so shockingly sexual at times (even more so in other stories)? What
purpose(s) could this language/shock serve?