Luke's summary/thoughts on "War Dances" by Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie is hilarious! I loved "Diary of a Part-Time Indian" and "War Dances" is just as entertaining. It's amazing how Alexie can make me feel like laughing and crying all at the same time. He's gone through some incredibly difficult things in his life, and yet he handles telling his story with such lightheartedness and honesty-even self-deprecating honesty-that you can't help but laugh along with him at the insanity of it all. It's tough to give a summary of this excerpt because it really is a collection of stories and moments in Alexie's life. He talks about his relationship with his father a lot, and the excerpt ends with him saying how close he feels to his father. He also talks about his own health problems, and his family, and the self-perception of Native Americans (which was fascinating, even if a bit uncomfortable). Themes that I picked up on were:

-fatherhood

-sickness & death

-racism/race relations

-disappointment with our heroes/role models

-role reversal in the parent child relationship

One activity that comes to mind is a writer's notebook entry where students would write about a difficult, uncomfortable or even tragic (if they feel comfortable exploring it) event in their lives that they later found funny in some way. If the unit is Macbeth, perhaps they could look for humor amongst the tragic happenings in that play, and satirize it.

Anyway, you all should read the Alexie chapter, it was awesome.