The Exploration of Native Americans’ Identity Crisis through Sherman Alexie’s Works

Abstract

Sherman Alexie is a celebrated contemporary Native American writer, poet, and filmmaker whose works have now achieved a good amount of acclaim and appealed to considerable public attention in the American society. Alexie presents the modern Indians' confusion and struggle about their identities on or off the reservations, which conform to the research of "Identity Crisis", a noted idea in psychological realm coined by psychologists Erik Erikson. Based on both cultural and literary analysis to three of Alexie's most well-known works, namely Ten Little Indians, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, this paper will first hypothetically propose several possible causes for explaining the exposed phenomena in the works, and then expound on the presumable resolution of Native Americans' identity crisis which Alexie subtly conveys in his works.