ABSTRACT
Sherman Alexie, who is of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene descent, has laughingly described himself as the “Indian du jour” because of his current high-profile status and popularity as an acclaimed American Indian writer, but he acknowledges that someday someone else will replace him (Interview Chato). His immodesty does not reflect an overactive ego but rather a realistic assessment of his position among contemporary Indian authors. In the June 1999 summer fiction issue of The New Yorker, Alexie’s name was among the “twenty best young fiction writers in America today” (Buford 65), and in 1996, he was picked as one of Granta magazine’s “Twenty Best American Novelists under the Age of Forty.” Alexie’s writing is known, for among other things, portraying the realities of life for contemporary reservation and urban Indians-unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, death, humor, popular culture, history, and anger, to name just a few of the themes.
