OPM: Other People's Memoirs
A reading by Sherman Alexie
Last night, I was fortunate to see award-winning writer
read from his memoir, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, a tribute to his mother, Lillian.He read and interacted with a packed crowd, engaging, smiling, tearing up.
Sherman graciously signed two books for me, his memoir and the novel for which he won a National Book Award, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
Through telling his stories with a self-awareness that stories make us who we are and need to be told, he inspired me to get back to my Substack. I interact with him on Substack Notes frequently, comic relief from the peanut gallery. A common refrain in my household is, “Sherman laughed at my comment today.”
In my head, I first heard of Sherman Alexie through Louis Owens, another Native American writer, novelist, scholar, Steinbeck expert, my long-time teacher/mentor at CSU Northridge and University of New Mexico. I think he told me about the short story, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” But the dates don’t work out. Sherman’s story was published in 1993, and I had left Louis and UNM behind in 1990. But I did see Louis again when he visited Kansas for a reading, and I drove him to and from the KC airport and escorted him around Lawrence for readings he gave at KU and Haskell Indian Nations University. He may have told me about it during his time in Kansas.
It had grown awkward between us by then.
Louis would commit suicide in 2002, two years before my brother’s swan dive in 2004. But I found out about Louis’ death shortly after my brother died, so my body felt both their deaths at the same time.
You see, Louis reminded me of my brother. My brother’s favorite TV show growing up was either The Lone Ranger or The Rifleman, such a pure example of TV culture of the 1960s for my soon-to-be pacifist hippie brother. Hey, you like what you like. The swirl of memories.
Most things come back to my brother.
My brother lived in Spokane for a while, preaching for the Assembly of God church for a deaf congregation. Sherman is also from Spokane. My memoir of Spokane is visiting my brother and very young niece and nephew and watching the Spokane Indians minor league baseball team host the L.A. Dodgers’ minor league team, the Albuquerque Dukes.
Baseball, my brother, Albuquerque, Louis, Spokane, Sherman - a swirl of memories, like a snowcone or a tie-dye shirt.
Without Louis, though, I wouldn’t have gained a love and reverence for T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, wasteland literature, Steinbeck, and Native American literature, and this newsletter would not exist. Or at least, it wouldn’t exist in quite this same form.
I have stories to share with you, Sherman, I hope some day to see you again.
Thank you for the reading and the inspiration.
Watch for new updates soon from My Own Private Waste Land. The long winter is over.