" 1970
Happy Birthday James and I'm in the Breakaway Bar drinking too many beers when the Vietnam war comes on television. The white people always want to fight someone and they always get the dark skinned people to do the fighting. All I know about this war is what Seymour told me when he came back from his tour of duty over there and he said all the gooks he killed looked like us and Seymour said every single gook he killed looked exactly like someone he knew on the reservation."
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
4 comments:
Funny, that's my favorite short story from the book. I even taught it during one of my teaching stints, and the students (high school students) loved it. I wrote about Alexie this year for Banned Books Week. (I haven't read his latest yet.)
I love this book. It's one of those books I reread every few years, give the book away to a friend, then go out and buy a new copy to reread,before giving the book away to a friend.
Alexie's got some interesting poetry, too. I'm fond of the interconnected short story format. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, which is excellent, uses it, too.
I'm not familiar with The Things They Carried. I had to google it to see if it was penned by the Tim O'Brien I am familiar with.
On the local library TV channel, they periodically broadcast visiting authors reading from their works. Simon Ortiz fits right in with that interconnected short story format. Every time they repeat his readings, I'll watch it.
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