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A review by milkamilka
War Dances by Sherman Alexie
4.0
Sherman Alexie's War Dances is a fairly short and extremely entertaining collection of short stories and poetry. It was also my first experience with Alexie's prose, since he was familiar to me only as a screenwriter of the brilliant film Smoke Signals (1998), a comedy/drama directed by Chris Eyre.
After taking a postcolonial theory and an ethnicity in North American film classes I have become increasingly interested in Native American voices and representation. I have seen my fair share of Westerns, but have never really liked them. These two courses ignited in me a desire to look for voices from within the Native American community and as a result I have found gems like Eyre's Smoke Signals and Skins, James Welch's Winter in the Blood and now this collection by Sherman Alexie. I will keep looking for more, and if you have any recommendations, please let me know.
From War Dances I especially found myself enjoying the poetry. There runs a certain kind of undercurrent of nostalgic within his poetic work - he writes about payphones and how it felt to run to the phone booth to call a college sweetheart, about the process of putting together mix tapes and the certain kind of simplicity of childhood that is not present anymore. I especially loved the mix tape poem because I am of that age that I can remember a time when I put together mix tapes to C-cassette - the careful process of recording songs from the radio, the time consuming wait for the perfect songs to record. Though I am only 25, I have noticed in myself this yearn for nostalgia, for the "old times", for a time when I wasn't so heavily reliant on technology. Don't get me wrong - I love my laptop, my phone and my iPad, but sometimes I just feel like taking a break from everything. The fact that these days your life is pretty much connected to all sorts of social media makes taking a break fairly difficult.
Alexie approaches topics related to the lives of Native Americans in North America poignantly, but also with humor. I have seen a documentary called Reel Injun about the representation of Native Americans in Hollywood for a few times now and I think what Alexie does with this collection can be connected fairly easily to that documentary. He for example addresses alcoholism within the Native communities and how that is treated - he for example asks the question of whether the death of a reservation raised Native American by alcoholism should be regarded as a death by natural causes (a horrific idea, but something that seems to dominate some American mainstream media). He also addresses relationships between members of different generations, religious believes, and so on.
I thoroughly enjoyed War Dances and definitely want to read more by Alexie at some point in time. I also ended up rewatching Smoke Signals and damn, that movie still delivers. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you add it to your to-watch list!
After taking a postcolonial theory and an ethnicity in North American film classes I have become increasingly interested in Native American voices and representation. I have seen my fair share of Westerns, but have never really liked them. These two courses ignited in me a desire to look for voices from within the Native American community and as a result I have found gems like Eyre's Smoke Signals and Skins, James Welch's Winter in the Blood and now this collection by Sherman Alexie. I will keep looking for more, and if you have any recommendations, please let me know.
From War Dances I especially found myself enjoying the poetry. There runs a certain kind of undercurrent of nostalgic within his poetic work - he writes about payphones and how it felt to run to the phone booth to call a college sweetheart, about the process of putting together mix tapes and the certain kind of simplicity of childhood that is not present anymore. I especially loved the mix tape poem because I am of that age that I can remember a time when I put together mix tapes to C-cassette - the careful process of recording songs from the radio, the time consuming wait for the perfect songs to record. Though I am only 25, I have noticed in myself this yearn for nostalgia, for the "old times", for a time when I wasn't so heavily reliant on technology. Don't get me wrong - I love my laptop, my phone and my iPad, but sometimes I just feel like taking a break from everything. The fact that these days your life is pretty much connected to all sorts of social media makes taking a break fairly difficult.
Alexie approaches topics related to the lives of Native Americans in North America poignantly, but also with humor. I have seen a documentary called Reel Injun about the representation of Native Americans in Hollywood for a few times now and I think what Alexie does with this collection can be connected fairly easily to that documentary. He for example addresses alcoholism within the Native communities and how that is treated - he for example asks the question of whether the death of a reservation raised Native American by alcoholism should be regarded as a death by natural causes (a horrific idea, but something that seems to dominate some American mainstream media). He also addresses relationships between members of different generations, religious believes, and so on.
I thoroughly enjoyed War Dances and definitely want to read more by Alexie at some point in time. I also ended up rewatching Smoke Signals and damn, that movie still delivers. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you add it to your to-watch list!