A life of Privilege

Sherman Alexie is not a great Native American writer. He is a great writer, who happens to be a Native American. On the podium, he is caustic, ribaldry funny and incisively observant about the condition of American life in general.

In one moment, he ridiculous white America for our attempt to adapt Native American religious practices. In the next, he's tells us,(liberal white communist Americans, that we are the gold standard of American life. that the privilege we have is envied by everyone in the world. He goes on to say that any time we want to give up our life of privilege, out of guilt or for any other reason, that we should give it to the first brown man or woman we run into that day.

H e quips endlessly about his personal life and it's intimate moments, including the facts about his early life on the reservation (the res). He tells us honestly that he hates what Dick Wolf has done to the HBO special "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". "Fuck Dick Wolf," were his exact words. I might add, he repeated those words many times. He admits that he hates the results because the film is not a true representation of the point of the book, which he says is Indian genocide, and he also admits some of his anger comes from being taken off the project as screenwriter.

He talks about doing an appearance at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia (They pronounce it Norfuck, and he takes great delight in repeating the name over and over again with the Virginia accent.) He went out for a walk that evening. When he returned from his adventure, and the story is longer and funnier than I can to repeat here, he has nine messages from friends and relatives and one message from his wife. They want to make sure which college he is speaking at and is he all right. They were concerned that he might have been at Virginia Tech.

After an impassioned tirade about the Television coverage and the officious commentary from both the left and the right, he asks a simple question. Did it ever occur to all of those people that think that the violence on television, movies and video games can promote a lonely, isolated and sick young man to take up weapons and kill innocent people, that the evening news with its depiction of a real war might be more depressing that the make believe war that the entertainment media makes up?

Sherman Alexie, does not make you comfortable, even when he has you laughing. Maybe it's because we aren't all that comfortable with our life of privilege