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
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.
