Regarding to the reading <Superman and me> by Sherman Alexie, he mentioned about how he started to read book, how he started learn to read, as well as he thinks through reading books had significant impact of changed his life.
The most inspired person of his life is his father, at least it is how I felt. The reason being he look up to his father, made his father an idol to him. Alexie’s father loves to read. In the article he mentioned that whenever his father has side money, he always goes to the bookstore to buy books. Even his father had to built four bookshelves without any experience nor taught by anyone, and very soon the bookshelves were filled with books among such wide range of reading. Therefore, Alexie were heavily impacted by his father. When he was three years old, he had a chance got a comic book called <Superman>, although he could not read by the time, but he first began with looking at the pictures and tried to tell what is happened at the event and assumed what was written on the dialogue of each characters were saying. I had very similar experience. When I first stepped to the American soil, the only English sentence I was speaking was I do not speak English. I found that very funny today. I started as eighth grader in here, attended English as Second Language (ESL) class. All of my classes was taught by a teacher. I remember my first English book was learning module of vocabularies, each vocabulary assign with a picture. Thus, I could assumed what was in the picture mean the word that right next to it, as well as right below the word, there were also a pronunciation, which had made my life much easier.
In this article, Alexie also mentioned that he were expected to fail in the non-indian world, but he refused, he fought, and succeed. Alexie knows if he could not changed this world, he had to change himself, so he started read more books, sometimes late into the night, when he could not hold his eyes anymore. Moreover, he read books at any and every possible time he could had, even a few minute left after he finished his in class assignment. He cherished the time and he spent on reading and tried to save his life. Books, a significant influence of his life, and reading them just a part of it. I think how Alexie became a writer was because he is good at reading, and he is able to tell stories in writing style. Compare myself to Alexie, I am not a reader nor a writer. And because I do not like to read, so my writing skills are low today. Although I had heard many people became so successful through reading and learn from it, but everytime when I pick a book or article to read, my eyes would felt so heavy.
In conclusion, through reading, Alexie had gained lot of experience and skills from it, either in his writing career nor life. I think one of the most important person in his life would be his father. If someone in my life would influence me to read more maybe I would save my lives as well, but there is not.