Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Sherman Alexie's poem "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" serves as both satire and critique of the persistent stereotypes, clichés, and romanticized notions that often populate literature about Native Americans. From the first line, Alexie launches into a laundry list of the tropes often found in such works: tragic features, half-breed heroes, and beautiful Indian women in love with white men. While ostensibly offering a guide on how to construct this type of novel, Alexie is actively dismantling the authenticity of these narratives.

The poem plays on the idea of "tragedy" as an essential component of Native American identity in literature. From "tragic features" to "tragic food," the term is absurdly over-applied, turning individual experience into a monolithic cultural attribute. It's a scathing critique of how literature distorts and reduces the complexity of Native American life.

The notion of the "half-breed" hero who "should often weep alone" highlights the fetishization of mixed heritage. This stereotypical character is torn between two worlds yet fully belongs to neither, therefore constituting a tragically romantic figure. Alexie's critique extends to how Native American women are portrayed in literature-often exoticized and compared to nature, as "brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water." This commodifies the Native American woman, making her a mere backdrop against which the white characters can play out their emotional or moral dramas.

Alexie also tackles the theme of forbidden love between Native American men and white women. This relationship is filled with lust and elements of the "savage," making it another clichéd narrative turn that fetishizes Native Americans. This obsession is manifested through lines like "Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey," further animalizing and exoticizing them for the white gaze.

Moreover, Alexie focuses on the tokenistic ways spirituality is handled in these stories. "Indians must see visions," he says, a statement that trivializes the profound cultural and spiritual practices of Native communities. Even white characters are allowed these "visions" if they are "in love with Indians," reflecting a kind of spiritual appropriation.

Then, in a masterful twist, Alexie confronts the concept of identity itself. The poem suggests that if a white person loves an Indian, then the white person has an "interior Indian," also a half-breed, "obviously from horse cultures." This reflects how white individuals often claim Native ancestry or spirituality to feel more authentic or exotic, further muddying cultural identities and trivializing real experiences.

The poem closes with a haunting paradox: "In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts." This line speaks to the erasure and marginalization of Native voices in American literature, replaced by white narratives that appropriate Native stories and characters.

Through irony, exaggeration, and biting humor, "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" offers a searing critique of the clichés and stereotypes that have long pervaded literature about Native Americans. Alexie challenges these narratives and demands more nuanced, honest portrayals, stripping away the romanticized veneer to question who gets to tell these stories and why.

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