a poem by Sherman Alexie, "At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School"

I guess I'm a little distraught about our discussion on "Do Not Go Gentle." I don't think I'm alone when I say, I'm also a little distraught about the story itself and the significance of Chocolate Thunder. While I hadn't read any of Alexie's work before this class, I've since started reading his book Ten Little Indians, from which "Do Not Go Gentle" comes, for another class about Gender Studies in Western Texts (ENGL 175) as well as his other poems in The Norton. I found his writing to be, well, awesome. While you may not agree with me, I believe Alexie deserves some more positive attention than that we are giving him. One of his poems I found particularly moving, as it, along with a lot of Alexie's works, addresses issues which Native Americans face in the US today regarding tradition, ethnicity, appreciation of ceremony and the land. Here it is reprinted:

At a Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School

from the photograph by Skeet McAuley (above)

the football field rises
to meet the mesa. Indian boys
gallop across the grass, against

the beginnings of their body.
On those Saturday afternoons,
unbroken horses gather to watch

their sons growing larger
in the small parts of the world.
Everyone is the quarterback.

There is no thin man in a big hat
writing down all the names
in two columns: winners and losers.

This is the eternal football game,
Indians versus Indians. All the Skins
in the wooden bleachers fancydancing,

stomping red dust straight down
into nothing. Before the game is over,
the eighth-grade girls' track team

comes running, circling the field,
their thin and brown legs echoing
wild horses, wild horses, wild horses.

From The Business of Fancydancing by Sherman Alexie, Hanging Loose Press

A Tribal School is a school controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in order to integrate Native American culture into education. Considering many Native Americans were forced into government run Boarding Schools during the early 20th century in order to assimilate them into 'white' culture, Tribal Schools seem like a way to bring back tradition and culture lost through previous attempts of assimilation.

Prof. Fisher touched on this briefly in class, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about the fact that all of the post 9/11 writers and texts we've been reading relate to, in some way, the stand point of minorities or what is sometimes identified as "the other," now that we've started reading Zigzagger along with Alexie and Lahiri. Or thoughts about what kind of impact culture has on Alexie's works. Or any general reactions to this poem.

Chicago

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg

via carl-sandburg.com

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Tomorrow I will get on a plane, fly six hundred miles and land at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, which I have considered to be my second home for nearly two decades.

I could have probably gotten away with spending my Spring Break in Florida, or California, or Nashville, or somewhere else just a little warmer and more picturesque. I wouldn't have gone to any of those places if someone payed me. I love Chicago and I love flying in from over it, looking at the lights that seem to extend on forever in one direction and cut off at Lake Michigan in another.

I think there is a lot of truth in this poem. Chicago is definitely wicked, crooked, brutal. It is often an ugly city; deteriorating structures, regular murders, corruption, pungent smells rising from the sewers. It is a flawed, extreme environment. But I think all that is part of what makes it truly alive, and in a way humanistic. I don't think there is more of a realistic amalgamation of what life in the world is really about, with its beautiful sights, ugly blemishes and all.

I will stay for a night in the city proper, go to an Irish punk show on St. Patrick's Day, and go to the Art Institute of Chicago to look at Monets and Renoirs the next day. I couldn't be more excited.

This post will be cross-posted on my personal blog, Kaini Industries.