Sherman Alexie Webquest

Your Name: _____Reece Pulfer______

1. Using online resources, research Sherman Alexie.

Find at least 3 sites that are about Alexie, or that reference Alexie’s works.

Cite the three sites:

1. Cite Name _ http://www.nndb.com/people/520/000113181/ ______Web Address: ______

2. Cite Name __ http://www.enotes.com/lone-ranger-tonto-fistfight-heaven ______Web Address: ______

3. Cite Name ______Web Address: ______

2. In your own words, describe at least three characteristics of Sherman Alexie:

a. ___American Aborigine

b. ___Male______

c. __Black hair______

3. List at least 3 books/articles written by Alexie, and provide a 1-2 sentence summary of what each is about:

1. ____Ten little Indians the book the ten little Indians is a book full of short stories. ______

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2. ______The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven __ Victor, his parents, and his uncles, Arnold and Adolph, who are quarreling during a New Year's Eve party when Victor is nine-years-old, in 1976. The weather forecast is for a hurricane, and the narrator surveys the bizarre behavior of many of the Indians on the reservation, many of them drunk and angry, recalling some wrong that had been done to them. The story also contains a flashback to when Victor was five years old and his parents could not afford to buy him anything for Christmas. Alexie introduces the themes he will develop throughout the book such as the relationship between the real and the imaginary, reservation poverty, and the idea of memory as an index of social and individual identity. Victor is a fictionalized version of Alexie, as the author has admitted. ______

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3. ___the absolutely true diary of a part time Indian Junior lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation, where he discovers that alcohol is more important to most residents than an education is. Junior decides to transfer from his reservation school to Reardan High, a white school that is more than twenty miles away. Once he arrives, Junior finds that he is the only Indian (besides the school’s mascot) there. His best friend on the reservation, Rowdy, stays behind and vows never to speak to Junior—the “traitor”—again. Junior also knows that everyone else on the reservation thinks he is an “apple”: red on the outside but white on the inside. Meanwhile, most of the students at Reardan treat Junior as an outcast as well. ______

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Based on what you’ve learned about Sherman Alexie, create a word picture of what you think his book The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian will be about (in other words, type all of the words that come to mind when you think about what his book could contain - what kinds of themes, characters, etc).