Sherman Alexie has been acclaimed by Time as "one of the better new novelists, Indian or otherwise," and his books have been compared to those of Richard Wright and James Baldwin in their immense lyric power and revolutionary spirit. Now, Sherman Alexie gives us his first new collection since the best-selling The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
In these stories, we meet the kinds of American Indians we rarely see in literature--the upper and middle class, the professionals and white-collar workers, the bureaucrats and poets, falling in and out of love and wondering if they will make their way home. A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. A Spokane son waits for his diabetic father to return from the hospital, listening to his father's friends argue over Jesus' carpentry skills as they build a wheelchair ramp. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with forty-two dollars and an overweight Indian he dubs Salmon Boy.
Sherman Alexie's is a voice of remarkable passion, and these stories are love stories--between parents and children, white people and Indians, movie stars and ordinary people. Witty, tender, and fierce, The Toughest Indian in the World is a virtuoso performance by one of the country's finest writers.
Editorial Reviews
"Humorous, disturbing, formally inventive and heartwarming, Alexie's stories continually surprise, revealing him again and again as a master of his craft." --Publishers Weekly
"Make no mistake: Alexie's talent is immense and genuine.... On this big Indian reservation we call 'the United States,' Sherman Alexie is one of the best writers we have." --Leslie Marmon Silko, The Nation
"The world's first fast-talking, wisecracking, mediagenic American Indian superstar.... There is an anger in Sherman Alexie's work that hasn't been seen since James Baldwin...his characters carry the uneasy burden of racism with a resigned form of black humor." --Bruce Barcott, Men's Journal
"Hard-edged and urban, distinctly individual.... The characters in Mr. Alexie's work are not the usual kind of Indians.... They are not tragic victims or noble savages...they listen to Jimi Hendrix and Hank Williams; they dream of being basketball stars.... And unlike most Indians in fiction, they are sometimes funny." --Dinitia Smith, The New York Times
About the Author
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian. He has written nine books of poems and two collections of stories and is the author of the novels Reservation Blues and Indian Killer. He also wrote the award-winning screenplay for Smoke Signals, a film based on his short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
