Write a personal essay, entitled “_ and Me.” (Fill in the blank with whatever you choose to write about).<\/p>\n
This assignment calls for some personal creativity and life writing (or autobiographical storytelling).<\/p>\n
Remember, we (the class) are your audience. You need to give us enough details, and express enough of your interiority, for us to feel what you were feeling, and care about your experience. Remember to appeal to pathos.<\/p>\n
When possible, use dialogue (so that readers experience a specific conversation that you had, related to the experience).<\/p>\n
Remember to use descriptive details and concrete images. What other effective devices did you notice Alexie using in “Superman and Me”?<\/p>\n
You should annotate “Superman and Me” but you\u00a0do not\u00a0have to (and\u00a0should not) write about these readings.<\/p>\n
You are writing your\u00a0own\u00a0personal essay, about something slightly humorous (a hero, an actor, a character, a pet, a food, a product, a game, and so on) that has had an impact on your sense of identity.<\/p>\n
First do the readings (“Superman and Me” and “Orange Crush”). These are\u00a0examples\u00a0of the kind of personal essay you are expected to write.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Write a personal essay same as \u201cSuperman and me\u201d with your own experience of childhood<\/p>\n
You can create any situation between \u201cme and ______\u201d.<\/p>\n
Write 1250 words.<\/p>\n
No references are required but must follow APA style format. <\/p>\n
Use your own words do not copy and paste from someone work.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuperman and me\u201d essay is attached below.<\/p>\n
Superman and Me\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sherman Alexie\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I\u00a0 cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which\u00a0 villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor the means by which I\u00a0 obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was 3 years old, a Spokane\u00a0 Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern\u00a0 Washington state. We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually\u00a0 managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by\u00a0 reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of\u00a0 irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on purpose,\u00a0 was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangster epics,\u00a0 basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought his books by\u00a0 the pound at Dutch’s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village. When he\u00a0 had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and\u00a0 hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in crazy piles in\u00a0 the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a fit of unemployment-inspired creative\u00a0 energy, my father built a set of bookshelves and soon filled them with a random\u00a0 assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam War and\u00a0 the entire 23-book series of the Apache westerns. My father loved books, and since I\u00a0 loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0I can remember picking up my father’s books before I could read. The words\u00a0 themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first\u00a0 understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn’t have the\u00a0 vocabulary to say “paragraph,” but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held\u00a0 words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had\u00a0 some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me. I\u00a0 began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small\u00a0 paragraph within the United States. My family’s house was a paragraph, distinct from the\u00a0 other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south and the Tribal\u00a0 School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate\u00a0 paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this\u00a0<\/p>\n
logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father,\u00a0 older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that\u00a0 Superman comic book. Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue and narrative was a\u00a0 three-dimensional paragraph. In one panel, Superman breaks through a door. His suit is\u00a0 red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces. I look at the narrative\u00a0 above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that “Superman is\u00a0 breaking down the door.” Aloud, I pretend to read the words and say, “Superman is\u00a0 breaking down the door.” Words, dialogue, also float out of Superman’s mouth. Because\u00a0 he is breaking down the door, I assume he says, “I am breaking down the door.” Once\u00a0 again, I pretend to read the words and say aloud, “I am breaking down the door” In this\u00a0 way, I learned to read.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0This might be an interesting story all by itself. A little Indian boy teaches himself\u00a0 to read at an early age and advances quickly. He reads “Grapes of Wrath” in\u00a0 kindergarten when other children are struggling through “Dick and Jane.” If he’d been\u00a0 anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a\u00a0 prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity. He\u00a0 grows into a man who often speaks of his childhood in the third-person, as if it will\u00a0 somehow dull the pain and make him sound more modest about his talents.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and\u00a0 non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay\u00a0 quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were\u00a0 Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations\u00a0 inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic\u00a0 reading in school but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs. They\u00a0 were monosyllabic in front of their non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories\u00a0 and jokes at the dinner table. They submissively ducked their heads when confronted by\u00a0 a non-Indian adult but would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As\u00a0 Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were\u00a0 ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into\u00a0 the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then during\u00a0 lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read\u00a0<\/p>\n
books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or basketball games. In shopping\u00a0 malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as many books as I could. I\u00a0 read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the\u00a0 books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the\u00a0 newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal\u00a0 offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I\u00a0 read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and\u00a0 desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was\u00a0 trying to save my life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was going to\u00a0 be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visit schools\u00a0 and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the reservation school\u00a0 system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories or novels. I was certainly\u00a0 never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Writing was something\u00a0 beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time that a guest teacher visited the reservation.\u00a0 There must have been visiting teachers. Who were they? Where are they now? Do they\u00a0 exist? I visit the schools as often as possible. The Indian kids crowd the classroom.\u00a0 Many are writing their own poems, short stories and novels. They have read my books.\u00a0 They have read many other books. They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant\u00a0 wonder. They are trying to save their lives. Then there are the sullen and already\u00a0 defeated Indian kids who sit in the back rows and ignore me with theatrical precision.\u00a0 The pages of their notebooks are empty. They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare\u00a0 out the window. They refuse and resist. “Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I throw\u00a0 my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am\u00a0 lucky. I am trying to save our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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