An Interview with Sherman Alexie

Abstract

On a rare sunny Seattle day, Sherman Alexie's manager offered me my choice of soda or bottled water and gave me a tour of Alexie's three-room office, a good-looking rooftop space with a deck that overlooks the tony community of Bellevue. Some worlds may contrast more starkly with Alexie's boyhood home on the Coeur d'Ale?e Indian Reservation, but not many. Alexie arrived late, comfortable in cotton, hair pulled back in a loose pony tail. As we introduced ourselves his smile hid a sense of weary obligation? this poet, fiction writer and filmmaker has many projects to promote. Though he became quite friendly after a few questions, at first his manner seemed to suggest, "Let's get to it." JF: You're called "the future of American fiction" by The New Yorker. SA: It's because they needed a brown guy. They had five of us I think. A guy asked me how do you feel about there being so few white men on the (1996) Granta list. I said there were 11 out of 20: how could that be 'few'? And 16 overall were white! I got all sorts of grief for being on the Granta list by the way. Like I didn't belong on it? JF: You only had Reservation Blues then. What about the response to The New Yorker list? SA: Everybody's really happy with it. JF: You've earned your place? SA: Yeah I guess. I'm an important brown guy now. (Laughs). Being dif ferent helps. I'm not going to deny that it helps a lot. I mean the work has to be good, but the fact that I'm different makes it more attractive to magazines. JF: So you grant that? SA: Oh yeah. I'm a firm believer in affirmative action?nobody unqualified ever gets a job through affirmative action. Maybe less qualified, but not un qualified. Certainly I might get on lists or get opportunities because I'm dif ferent, because I'm Indian. JF: And it doesn't bother you? SA: No! Hell no! Reparation. (Laughs). Nobody white is getting anything because they're white. It doesn't happen in the literary world, never, never once has a white guy gotten more because he's white. But then you have that 59