ADAMS/English

Superman and Me
by Sherman Alexie
(from The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading,
eds. Michael Dorris and Emilie Buchwald, Milkweed Editions, 1998)

I learned to read with a Superman

comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I
cannot recall which particular Superman
comic book I read, nor can I remember which
villain he fought in that issue. I cannot
remember the plot, nor the means by which I
obtained the comic book. What I can
remember is this: I was 3 years old, a Spokane
Indian boy living with his family on the
Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern
Washington state. We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually
managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class
by reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a
combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear, and government surplus food.

My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on
purpose, was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangster
epics, basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought
his books by the pound at Dutch’s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and
Value Village. When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets,
convenience stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books.
They were stacked in crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a
fit of unemployment-inspired creative energy, my father built a set of bookshelves
and soon filled them with a random assortment of books about the Kennedy
assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam war and the entire 23-book series of the
Apache Westerns. My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an
aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.

I can remember picking up my father’s books before I could read. The

words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment
when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn’t
have the vocabulary to say “paragraph,” but I realized that a paragraph was a fence
that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common
purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This
knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs.
Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family’s
house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the

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north, the Fords to our south and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house,
each family member existed as a separate paragraph but we still had genetics and
common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed
family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased
sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother.

At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that
Superman comic book. Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue and narrative
was a three-dimensional paragraph. In one panel, Superman breaks through a
door. His suit is red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces.
I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it
tells me that “Superman is breaking down the door.” Aloud, I pretend to read the
words and say “Superman is breaking down the door.” Words, dialogue, also
float out of Superman’s
mouth. Because he is
breaking down the door,
I assume he says, “I am
breaking down the
door.” Once again, I
pretend to read the
words and say aloud, I
am breaking down the
door.” In this way, I
learned to read.

This might be an interesting story all by itself. A little Indian boy teaches
himself to read at an early age and advances quickly. He reads Grapes of Wrath in
kindergarten when other children are struggling through Dick and Jane. If he’d
been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been
called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply
an oddity. He grows into a man who often speaks of his childhood in the third-
person, as if it will somehow dull the pain and make him sound more modest
about his talents.

A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by

Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They
wanted me to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for
volunteers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid.
Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on
the outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how
to sing a few dozen powwow songs. They were monosyllabic in front of their
non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories and jokes at the dinner table.
They submissively ducked their heads when confronted by a non-Indian adult but

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would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As Indian
children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were
ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.

I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books
late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess,
then during lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom
assignments. I read books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or
basketball games. In shopping malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and
pieces of as many books as I could. I read the books my father brought home from
the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I
read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletins posted
on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk
mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had
words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those
books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my
life.

Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was
going to be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I
visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the
reservation school system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories or
novels. I was certainly never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and
novels. Writing was something beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time that a
guest teacher visited the reservation. There must have been visiting teachers. Who
were they? Where are they now? Do they exist? I visit the schools as often as
possible. The Indian kids crowd the classroom. Many are writing their own
poems, short stories and novels. They have read my books. They have read many
other books. They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant wonder. They are
trying to save their lives. Then there are the sullen and already defeated Indian
kids who sit in the back rows and ignore me with theatrical precision. The pages
of their notebooks are empty. They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare out
the window. They refuse and resist. “Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I
throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am
arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives.