《American short story masterpieces》课件14--What You Pawn I Will Redeem.docVIP

Passage Fourteen Sherman Alexie b. 1966 While most of his memorable characters are Native Americans, Alexie challenges the typical myths about Indians that are still abundant today. For example, in response to the popular belief that Native Americans have a natural or special connection to the land, that they’re naturally environmentalists, he describes growing up with “aunts and uncles and cousins throwing cans out the window.” Many writers produce Indian literature, he explains, by throwing in “a couple of birds and four directions and corn pollen.” In contrast, Alexie wants to write about “the daily lives of Indians,” which are not as romantic as the myths would have us believe. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” was first published in The New Yorker in 2003 and later that year in a collection called Ten Little Indians. What You Pawn I Will Redeem Noon One day you have a home and the next day you don’t, but I’m not going to tell you my particular reasons for being homeless, because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks. I’m a Spokane Indian boy, an Interior Salish, and my people have lived within a hundred-mile radius of Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-tree years ago for college, flunked out after two semesters, worked various blue-and-bluer-collar jobs, married two or three times, fathered two or three kids, and then went crazy. Of course, crazy is not the official definition of my mental problem, but I don’t think asocial disorder fits it, either, because that makes me sound like I’m a serial killer or something. I’ve never hurt another human being, or, at least, not physically, I’ve broken a few hearts in my time, but we’ve all done that, so I’m nothing special in that regard. I’m a boring heartbreaker, too. I never dated or married more than one woman at a time. I didn’t break hearts into pieces overnight. I broke them slowly and carefully. And I didn’t set any land-speed records running out the door. Piece