Fancy Dancer

Sherman Alexie is a lionized Indian writer and filmmaker; I doubt you've heard of him. 

And, for sure, nobody on X has heard of him.

Family, friends, and publishers convinced him to open an X account, and he only got 4o followers, because Tweeps are into horror, romance, and spy novels 

Sherman is a lionized writer worldwide. He's a card-carrying member of the Academy and Institute of Letters whose pin is in the desk drawer under a pile of papers.

In his book Superman and Me, he talks about learning to read when he was 3, reading a comic book, and associating the panels with the written narrative.  

One day, he picks up a book and looks closely at the words. It's hard, but he sees the words on the pages as though they were cattle corralled into paragraphs. Sherman says it like this,

I didn't have the vocabulary to say, paragraph, but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.  

At the age of 3, the prodigy sees the world in paragraphs. In his own words saying, 

This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south, and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and adopted little brother. 

By the age of 5, Sherman’s in kindergarten reading The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, laughingly, as his neighbors are reading Dick, Spot, and Jane.

Sherman, the wunderkind, was seen as an oddball on the reservation; Indian kids weren't supposed to be geniuses. 

In 1985 Alexie applied and was accepted to Jesuit Gonzaga University in Spokane, receiving an academic scholarship, the only Indian kid to make it to college from his reservation.   

His work focused on the troubles of Indians, life on the reservation, alcoholism, poverty, and despair, but he didn't cry about it, he wrote comically.

Sherman played guard on the Jesuit school's basketball team till his Senior year. 

One day, he calls the reservation to talk to his mom, who's in the bathroom, asking her,

is papa there? 

Henry, you know your father died 7 years ago. 

Alexie says, 

My mother laughs at the angels who wait for us to pause during the most ordinary of days and sing our praise to forgetfulness before they slap our souls with their cold wings; the angels burden and unbalance us, and da ride us piggyback. 

Alexie is also a filmmaker. He's produced and written screenplays for several low-budget films, including Fancy Dancing, Winter in the Blood, and Smoke Signals. 

All in all Sherman Alexie is 1 of my favorite writers.