| Title | : | Ten Little Indians |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 009946456X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780099464563 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2003 |
| Awards | : | O. Henry Award 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem' (2005), Los Angeles Times Book Prize Fiction (2003) |
Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie's stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candour that cut to the heart of the human experience.
Ten Little Indians Reviews
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There are so many short story collections postmillennium that convey exactly what the writer is all about (The interpreter of maladies, Olive kitteridge immediately come to mind). Ten Little Indians is no exception. The heartbreak of the modern Spokane Indian is palpable--S. Alexie is not only a master of his craft, he actually has valuable insights to contribute to the ongoing national discussion. He has something earthshatteringly Terrific & Terrible to say.
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I picked this book up because I really wanted to read Alexie's other short story collection - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (fabulous title!) and couldn't find it at the time. I'm not a fan of short stories, and I didn't enjoy this collection. But I can say that in my opinion the stories are well-written and if "bold, uncensored, raucous, and sexy" is your thing, then you might really enjoy the book. The story I enjoyed the most was "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" - telling the story of a homeless Indian man's one-day quest to find $999 to buy back his grandmother's stolen pow-wow dance regalia from a pawn shop. It wasn't bold, uncensored, raucous, and sexy; it was poignant and touching and human and real. That's what I enjoy.
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Awesome book. Very funny, deadpan. Also eye-opening, in that I had no idea there was (apparently, insofar as the stories are realisms) so much anti-Native racism in the Northwest. His dialogue is fantastic, especially when people talk past each other. Most people seem to think the "9/11 story" or the last, longest story are the show-stoppers; it certainly has the longest stretches of hard-fought transformation, and features a man and his (dying) father, and actually, like many of Alexie's stories, has very convincing male friendships. I tend to like stories with multiple axes (axises?), tho, so I preferred the basketball love story and the story of the literary stalker who chases down the possibly fake Indian writer adopted into a white family who has his heyday with the spoken-word hippies, then disappears.
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Three stars is being generous, it's more like 2.5. Most of the stories seemed pretty pointless and even though the books "theme" was Indians, most of the stories had nothing to do with that. If the author deleted the sentence that told you the main character was an Indian, there wouldn't be anything. This was very disappointing.
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The last few years I've been trying to read more short stories. It isn't a genre I really gave much time to in the past because I figured my TBR of full length novels was too long. I'm glad I've been expanding my reading horizons, though, even if some of the collections I've read have been hit or miss.
However, Sherman Alexie never misses. These nine stories were fantastic, really taking me away. All of them were more or less set around where he lives and featured Spokane characters, many of whom you could tell reflected himself and his experiences. Of course basketball featured heavily as well.
Darkly funny and often heartbreaking, every single one of these powerful stories was wonderful. Ten Little Indians is just further proof that everything Alexie writes is a gift. The man is my favorite author for a reason, after all. -
White people looked at the Grand Canyon, Niagra Falls, the full moon, newborn babies, and Indians with the same goofy sentimentalism.
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The 2004 short story collection, "Ten Little Indians," by Sherman Alexie, is another one of those beautiful and gut-wrenching masterworks that made me laugh a lot and made me cry. These nine stories are trenchant, bitterly uplifting, and focused on various themes surrounding Native American identity in the United States after September 11, 2001.
The phrase "bitterly sarcastic" appears in this book, and while the author's ruthless wit can certainly deliver an abundance of cutting zingers, these stories are also extremely generous and compassionate. Alexie's clean, concise prose traffics in the ugly truth, but the stories in "Ten Little Indians" always reaffirm life. In the worldview of Alexie's fiction, the human spirit is profoundly flawed, but still worth the absurdity and pain that come with being alive.
I love reading Alexie because he makes me feel less alone. His work always gives me the grungy kitchen table to gather and commune with my metaphysical tribe.
I'm also glad that I read this collection after reading his 2017 memoir, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." Many people have read Alexie's incredibly popular YA novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," but his adult prose and his memoir hit so much harder than his YA fiction ever could.
I highly recommend "Ten Little Indians" to any Sherman Alexie fans who haven't yet read this book. It's fantastic. -
It’s been awhile since I’ve thought to myself “I’m too much of a prude for this” and felt bad about it. I certainly don’t mind erotic fiction, judging from my enjoyment of romance novels and explicit fan fiction. But there’s a difference between the happy-ending stuff and the stories in this, each of which contained an explicit sex scene or references to explicit sex. It was unexpected, for starters, since the summaries focus on Alexie’s (well-deserved) reputation for insightful, clear prose. It was also uncomfortable and desperate and voyeuristic and upsetting and a whole bunch of other, similar adjectives. These were generally not people having a great time and it made it hard to focus on the rest of the plots.
So I was too much of a prude for this, but I also felt bad about it because it felt like I was the one who forced the wrong door open and found myself somewhere I didn’t belong.
Edited 5/29/2020: I just learned from
this article on beloved (racist) classics that Sherman Alexie has been accused of sexual harassment numerous times, which adds an icky oil slick to this whole thing. -
Hmmm....after absolutely loving The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, this one was a little disappointing. And it's funny, because there were some stories (like "What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?" and "The Search Engine") that revealed the same open-hearted, funny writer that I loved in Part-Time Indian. There were others that just didn't ring quite as deeply true and one ("Can I Get a Witness?") that I found actively distasteful. I still look forward to reading more Alexie -- but I think he should stick with the skeptical optimism of "Frank Snake Church" rather than going all the way down the cynical path as he seems to do in "Witness."
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This is Alexie's PERFECT short story collection. Alexie is able to portray gender, poverty, humor, grief and death throughout these stories. I was most impressed by the way Alexie is able to "accurately" portray women and give them a voice through his own. There's a deep understanding of what it is to be human and what it is to live - to live darkly, to live humorously, to live with grief, to live with love.
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You would be hard pressed to find a better application for the phrase “I laughed, I cried” than this collection of short stories, almost all of which are built around tragedies and heartbreak, but you’ll be so busy laughing out loud at the author’s talent for finding humor and beauty in all aspects of the human experience that the pain cannot stop you from enjoying yourself.
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LOVE
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I love these short stories by
Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian whose works I have read over the years. I guess it's time to admit that he is one of my favorites, and his collection
Ten Little Indians is one of the greatest collections of short stories ever written by an Indian raised on a reservation.
Particularly good were "The Search Engine," "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," and the last story, "What Ever happened to Frank Snake Church."
There is a gentleness about Alexie's stories that is catching. -
"I'm not scared of the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world. Jerry and Pat aren't the ones crawling in and out of the sweat houses and pontificating about how much they admire Indian culture. I'm scared of the white liberals who love Indians. I figure about 75 percent of white liberals who hang around Indians will eventually start believing they're Indians, then start telling us Indians how to be Indian." (p. 140)
(from "The life and times of Estelle Walks above")
I picked this collection up after reading Alexie's popular YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. That Book had me laughing and crying over and over. Ten Little Indians had a similar effect. At times hysterically funny, other times passionate and angry and there was a good amount of heart warming moments to hold me. The right mix to keep me interested too. I often pick up short story collections and only read the first few, but this one I looked forward to returning to every night. Not a one night stand (unless you pull an all nighter).
This collection has 9 stories that all range from 6 -53 pages, the average story is about 25 pages. My favourite story was "Do You know Where I am?" about a marriage that overcomes infidelity.
I highly recommend for anyone looking to spend time with a witty, quick and passionate guy. Some of the recurring topics include Post 9/11 Terrorism, Family, Marriage, Racism, Colonialism, Writing, the Indigenous experience (often poking fun at 'magical Indian' tropes) and there's two stories that strongly feature Basketball.
Favourite quote: "We fought hard for our happiness, and sometimes we won. Over the years, we won often enough to develop a strong taste for winning." (p. 167) -
I'm still trying to figure out how to say this:
The thing I like best about short story collections (by a single author), if they're written well and compiled well, is the feeling I get, after reading each story, of comprehending an intimate secret the author needed me to understand. Poetry and novels both can (and do) knock me out, but there's something about the short story that can really get into my blood.
I am in love with this book. I couldn't get enough of it while I was reading it. It accompanied me almost everywhere I went this weekend, and when I thought maybe, for social reasons (and reducing the weight of my purse from being a lethal weapon), I should leave it at home for just a few hours, I obsessed over its absence like a phantom limb or shiny, new lover. I held it like a teddy bear going to sleep at night. I wanted to absorb it into my skin, and I feel this immense sense of guilt for refiling it back onto the bookshelf. I'd rather frame it.
Every story contains characters and situations that are tender, profane, and hilarious all at once, and each constantly evaded my expectations by achieving something far greater than anything I could have imagined. I'm not much for spoilers though I hate to not discuss every story for its brilliance, but it seems a little much to tally everything I loved about each story here. I don't recall enjoying The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven as much, but it has been several years and this experience has caused me to seriously consider rereading it.
I think you should read this book. -
It is extremely rare for an author to bat .500+ in these collections, but most stories here stand on their own merit and would be worthy of a magazine highlight. Particularly high highs were: Lawyer's League, Can I Get a Witness?, Flight Patterns, and What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?
Written in the immediate impact of 9/11, the fixation on terror and towers seems a little dated but the other themes (grief, familial love, well-meaning failure, the social power of ascribed identity) are timeless.
Another one to file in "wish I had five copies to hand out to friends immediately." Also, must mention (admit) that Amy read the first story to me as we were travelling through Yukon and I never would have picked it up otherwise. -
This is the second book by Sherman Alexis I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few months. Because Ten Little Indians is a collection of short stories, it’s a shame Good Reads doesn’t allow for rating each story. This collection contains an occasional two star short story, mostly three and four star short stories and a couple five star short stories.
I found myself regularly comparing and contrasting this book with the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro and Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, Interpreters of Maladies. Whereas Alice Munro’s describes living in Canada to outsiders, Alexis and Lazaro describe the alien experience of living in 21st Century America, Fascinating to me, Lahiri seems to long for a more inclusive America whereas Alexis seems more confused and hurt living in 21st Century America. My favorite story in this book concerns a self~conscious man laughing at the irony of being a Native American forced to live in a world stolen from him.
Two images from this story will stick in my brain for years. One, an old Native American man tells a young Native American girl to do this when her white teacher tells her about Columbus discovering America. “Jump on the teacher’s back and yell, “I am Columbus and I am discovering you.” What a great image of another perspective of Columbus. Two, a man is reflecting on why he sees the humor in everything. He compares the humor and the hurt of Native Americans with the humor and hurt of Jews. He says, “Maybe being the descendants of people who have survived a Holocaust sharpens one’s sense of humor as a way of coping with the deepest hurts.”
This author is worth reading. -
This is the third short story collection I’ve read by Alexie (the others are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World). If you’ve read his stuff before, you know what you’ll get: great prose discussing identity, Native American culture, and Native American struggles. But while his stories revolve around similar topics, I’ve always found his characters distinct and unique (other than a fixation on basketball). Ten Little Indians is no different. We get fantastic prose in stories discussing a college student finding a book of poetry that causes her to chase down its author; a middle-aged woman who wrestles with her life after experiencing a terrorist bombing; a salesman who has a life-impacting conversation with his Ethiopian cabbie; and a homeless man looking for a way to buy back his grandmother’s stolen tribal gear from a pawn shop (my favorite story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”), to name just a few of the interesting stories. In a few stories, I felt like Alexie built a structure primarily to vent some personal beliefs (“The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above” was my least favorite). But overall, a solid collection. Recommended.
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This was an unexpected read. Voted on by my book club. A collection of mostly compelling short stories of modern day experiences of varying people from the Spokane Native American Tribe. Emotional, heartfelt, and poignant at times. Funny and mildly erotic at others. Covering a wide range of topics from family, destiny, to racism and mental health. The author I feel has a smoothness to his writing style that makes this book more of a “page turner” than it might otherwise seem”. My only major criticism without getting too nitpicky is that a lot of emphasis is put on these stories being about Native Americans, but a handful of them could easily be about people of any heritage. Unless that’s a point I somehow missed. Definitely worth a read. If possible I’d actually give it a 3.5 instead of a 3. But the good reads app doesn’t allow for that.
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I confess I don't like short stories very much. I prefer long novels I can get lost in for days or weeks. Sherman Alexie is one exception. His short stories are so insightful, funny, or sad, that they contain worlds. This collection is no exception. From the political lawyer who yearns for his glory days as a basketball player to the broke, homeless wanderer who sees his grandmother's dance regalia in a pawnshop, these stories take you far away into a world you can get lost in.
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There are some really excellent stories in here, all featuring Spokane aboriginals. Although they all share this commonality, their stories are all diverse and provide a variety of emotional impacts.
Definitely worth a read -
my favorite was the last one with frank snakechurch
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3.5*
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Short story collection that focuses on the Native American experience of integration into mainstream American society. Different characters in each story, but all educated Native Americans finding their way/voice. As this was published 2003, also focus on 9/11 impacts. Funny, off-beat, unique perspective.
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A lovely collection of short stories that I will definitely be revisiting
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The collection of short stories were different enough to keep me interested but connected enough to feel like a book! 😂
It’s storytelling at its best about the lives of the modern day Pacific Northwest American Indian - irreverent, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking. And the writing is good which is always a bonus! -
Ten Little Indians is a book of nine short stories by Sherman Alexie each dealing with trying to come to terms with lives that are no longer traditional and they need to fit into American culture. Each story is linked not by characters or even setting (even though all the stories are set in Seattle), but by ideas and themes.
The most obvious example are the Indians (that’s what they call themselves) in the stories are searching for new ceremonies for the lives they lead outside of tribal systems, outside of their traditions, and trying to assimilate into the urban west of the 21st Century. Significantly, the first story is titled “The Search Engine.” From Corliss in “Search Engine” to Frank Snake Church in “Whatever Happened to Frank Snake Church?” all the characters are searching for new ceremonies in their lives or to adapt some of their traditional ones to modern life. They work and live in an assimilated world. Something is missing in their lives. As they try to put their finger on it they discover it’s the lack of the traditional life they all have memories of or that is only a generation removed and their parents or grandparents told them about.
Most of the characters discover the same solution to their problem by creating new ceremonies and rituals for the lives they lead. Corliss in “The Search Engine” is very aware of creating new rituals as she tracks down a native American poet who doesn’t turn out to be all that she imagines him to be. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is almost a fairy tale of a homeless alcoholic Indian and his quest to redeem at least a part of his traditional heritage and what at first seems to be a growing tragedy transcends that altogether and becomes something quite unexpected.
Don’t let all this talk of ritual and searching for new ceremonies deter you. The stories have humor to them. Not only do the characters have a cynical outlook on themselves or a sarcastic remark to comment on their situation, but Alexie invests the stories with humor and has fun with the characters. You can tell upon reading that Alexie likes his characters. Even when the characters don’t act so nice it’s evident that Alexie respects the characters and has a certain amount of sympathy for the people in the portraits he’s rendering.
While the stories are all of Indians, there are a few Anglos that enter their worlds. What turns the stories to the universal is that the search for new ceremonies for the new world we’ve created isn’t exclusively an Indian pursuit. Today more and more people turn to Native American culture and religion (the last ultimate act of assimilation?) to find their answers in life and we’re passing each other in the opposite direction looking for the same thing. -
A collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie.
The first story, "The Search Engine," is the type of story that will make a lover of books fall in love with an author. The way Alexie talks about books and poetry and readers (and people in general) in the first part of the story is beautiful and poetic and insightful. The rest of the story is great, but that beginning just grabs your heart for all kinds of reasons.
"Can I Get a Witness?" is a crazy story about a woman in a post-September 11th terrorist attack in Seattle, and all the thoughts she has after the attack. Thoughts about a stranger she meets, about her unhappy life, about the 9/11 attack, about the attack she was just in. The story is crazy because, even though her ideas are wild and rambling and seem messed up, you can (or at least I can) completely understand the thoughts she has, and where she's coming from. Then you throw in the man she meets, and what his life has been (a man who makes inappropriate jokes and drives away his wife [which sounds *so* much like a relationship I had, so there's some personal connection to his story], and who's searching for meaning in his own life, and his internal debate of whether he's a good person or not), and there's more heartbreak in the story. It's one of those that leaves you kind of breathless, kind of sad for life in general, kind of sad for these specific characters.
"Flight Patterns" is also pretty great.
"The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above" - what a great story about a hippie single mother and her adolescent son who gets taken to female self-help groups, gets sex advice from his mom, and becomes his mom's best friend.
"What You Pawn I Will Redeem" is also a sweet little story. Not sweet like happy romantic love, but sweet like well written and intriguing. I really liked Jackson, and his quest.
"What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church" is a pretty great story, as well. It dragged for a couple of pages for me toward the end, but ended up making a comeback (a "return"). It's a story of a man ("old"?!? No, I refuse to believe that. He's barely older than I am!) whose parents die, and in his grief he loses his mind a bit and tries to return to his days of basketball greatness. (A way oversimplified summary of a good story and deep mental workings.) -
Titled after a fantastic dialog between two non-white men as they described their identities to one another, (in describing his Spokane Identity, the protagonist in "Flight patterns" describes himself not as a 'bejeweled' Indian from India, but the 'bows-and-arrows Indian to a cabbie. The cabby replies, "Oh, you mean ten little, nine little eight little Indians?"), this collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie showcases his talent at describing social relationships. I admire his ability to balance negative events and racial stereotyping with positive, loving moments within the narratives. Here's one of my favorites from the same aforementioned story; a moment between a husband and a wife:
"William kissed Marie, reached beneath her pajama top, and squeezed her breasts. He thought about reaching inside her pajama bottoms. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and tried to wrestle him into bed. Oh, God, he wanted to climb into bed and make love. He wanted to fornicate, to sex, to breed, to screw, to make the beast with two backs. Oh, sweetheart, be my little synonym! He wanted her to be both subject and object. Perhaps it was wrong (and unavoidable) to objectify female strangers, but shouldn’t every husband seek to objectify his wife at least once a day? William loved and respected his wife, and delighted in her intelligence, humor, and kindness, but he also loved to watch her lovely ass when she walked, and stare down the front of her loose shirts when she leaned over, and grab her breasts at wildly inappropriate times—during dinner parties and piano recitals and uncontrolled intersections, for instance. He constantly made passes at her, not necessarily expecting to be successful, but to remind her he still desired her and was excited by the thought of her. She was his passive and active."
Alexie is a master at portraying tensions between what is 'appropriate' (or even moral) in social relations as double edged: they create both limitations and openings for people. There are few authors who can capture these elements of human life with such an honest and detailed eye. -
This is a book that asks you to look deep inside and ask, "Who are you?" A series of short stories of Indians living off the Rez, struggling with their cultural identities. Each story is about relationships, whether good or bad and how they impact your life and color your identity. There are definitely some mis-steps, as I found "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," and "Do You Know Where I Am" to be over-long and vague.
You will find so much to laugh and cry over, whether its a young, brash Indian falling in love with a writer she has never met, or the family who saves their child with a most unusual talisman. My two favorite stories are "Can I get a Witness" and "What You Pawn, I will Redeem". The first follows an Indian who is caught in a restaurant bombing and is helped by a white man, with whom she shares her desire to use the bombing to escape her life of quiet hell. The second is the most lauded of all the stories in the book. It follows a homeless Spokane Indian who is trying to earn the money to buy back his grandmothers stolen dress, from a pawn shop.
Sherman Alexie is an immensely gifted writer who writes both men and women with equal sincerity and grace. I feel he is occasional heavy-handed in his political proselytizing. Also I feel like he sometimes falls into the ravine of the vague Indian sentimentalism and soppiness that he decries in the first story.
That said, Alexie is one of the best writers of this generation. His books are gorgeous, vibrant and approachable literary fiction. Even though this is a muddled book for me, the good stories are fantastic and well worth the read and there aren't any bad stories. Just stories that didn't engage me as much.
