Alexie’s Healing Stories for American Indians’ Collective Trauma
1
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper ponders on the sociopolitical, ideological, and historical places of the American Indian father within Sherman Alexie’s two short stories, “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” and “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” Both stories first appear in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in 1993 and present an Indian father who is “lost” and his son who is trying to connect with him. The connection and disconnection, the torment of the past, and the grief of loss that Victor experiences are to some extent autobiographical. Alexie is still “angry” about all the social injustice, discrimination, and cruelty of American society, and his mourning for his long-deceased father continues even today. He suffers from his own painful past and the past of Native Americans. Like Victor, the narrator of the two stories, Alexie struggles on the borderline between white culture which is regarded as the mainstream and the culture of minority, a culture of his own tribe. Victor’s stories are Alexie’s and collectively Native Americans’ because they all share the trauma originated from the past of colonization. Thus it is vital for the reader to realize America’s domestic colonial history in which the stories of both Victor’s and Alexie’s are profoundly rooted. Scrutinizing the stories through the lens of new historicism, this paper discusses an American history told by Native Americans and interprets the stories in terms of the collective trauma that Native Americans have undergone. Also it examines the roles of the stories as a demonstration of their reality of frustration, anguish, resentment, and unhomeliness.
Abstract
This paper ponders on the sociopolitical, ideological, and historical places of the American Indian father within Sherman Alexie’s two short stories, “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” and “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” Both stories first appear in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in 1993 and present an Indian father who is “lost” and his son who is trying to connect with him. The connection and disconnection, the torment of the past, and the grief of loss that Victor experiences are to some extent autobiographical. Alexie is still “angry” about all the social injustice, discrimination, and cruelty of American society, and his mourning for his long-deceased father continues even today. He suffers from his own painful past and the past of Native Americans. Like Victor, the narrator of the two stories, Alexie struggles on the borderline between white culture which is regarded as the mainstream and the culture of minority, a culture of his own tribe. Victor’s stories are Alexie’s and collectively Native Americans’ because they all share the trauma originated from the past of colonization. Thus it is vital for the reader to realize America’s domestic colonial history in which the stories of both Victor’s and Alexie’s are profoundly rooted. Scrutinizing the stories through the lens of new historicism, this paper discusses an American history told by Native Americans and interprets the stories in terms of the collective trauma that Native Americans have undergone. Also it examines the roles of the stories as a demonstration of their reality of frustration, anguish, resentment, and unhomeliness.
참고문헌 (21)
- Alexie, Sherman., "The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock.” 1993. American Family Album: 28 Contemporary Ethnic Stories", pp.107~115 (2000), Harcourt
- Alexie, Sherman., "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" (2013), Grove
- Alexie, Sherman., "Portable Literature", pp.163~172 (2007), Thomson
- Appiah, Kwame Anthony., "The Ethics of Identity" (2005), Princeton UP
- Bruchac, Joseph, "The Boarding School Experience in American Indian Literature", RAGAZINE.CC: The On-Line Magazine of Art, Information & Entertainment, 10(2) (2014)
- Cline, Lynn., "About Sherman Alexie", Ploughshares, 26(4), pp.197~202 (2000)
- Edmunds, R. David., "Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895-1995", American Historical Review, 100(3), pp.717~740 (1995)
- Gross, Emma R., "Native American Family Continuity as Resistance: The Indian Child Welfare Act as Legitimation for an Effective Social Work Practice", Journal of Social Work, 3(1), pp.31~44 (2003)
- Miller, Timothy., "The Hippies and American Values" (1991), U of Tennessee P
- Moyers, Bill., "Sherman Alexie: Living Outside Tribal Lines", Online video clip. Moyers & Company. Public Affairs Television, Inc, ~ (2013)
- JaiYoungPark, "An Emblematic Challenge to White America in Indian Killer", 미국학 논집, 35(3), pp.213~229 (2003), 한국아메리카학회
- "Poet Sherman Alexie Talks ‘Faces’ and War Dances", Online video clip. PBS Newshour. PBS, ~ (2009)
- Pratt, Richard H., "Kill the Indian, Save the Man. 1892. History Matters", American Social History Project, Center for Media and Learning, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, ~ (2014)
- "Robert Johnson. "Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica Academic. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (2015), Encyclopædia Britannica Inc
- Smith, Sherry L., "Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power" (2012), Oxford UP
- "Summer of Love and Woodstock", The Cold War Museum, ~ (2014)
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty., "The Post-Colonial Studies Reader", pp.24~28 (1995), Routledge
- Takaki, Ronald., "A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America" (1993), Back Bay Books
- Tyson, Lois., "Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide" (2006), Routledge
- Williams, Sarah., "Man of Many Tribes", StarTribune, ~ (2011)