SUPERMAN AND ME
by Sherman Alexie
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 vVietman 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 wwere 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 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 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 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 sister 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 aloud and say, “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 riducled 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 would slug it out with the Indian bully who was ten 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 finished my
classroom assignments. I read books in the car when my family travelled 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 bullitens posted on the walls fo 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. 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.
