Julie Szekely

We posed the question in class about how Sherman Alexie is the Hendrix of Native American literature after listening to Hendrix’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” In Hendrix’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner” it was like he gave it a twist to show the negative side of the country. I took it as him taking a song that represented freedom of the country and saying that it is no longer true. He is turning a positive song about our country into a negative song. An example of this is in the part “and the bombs bursting in air..” which is where I always pictured a fireworks show and when Hendrix played I pictured war and bombing. I pictured that because with his guitar he made the sounds of bombs hitting and just made it sound sad. This then makes you see Alexie as the Hendrix of Native American literature in which he is taking the traditional Native American stories and giving them a negative twist. He is not making us feel that Native Americans are like everyone else he is showing us the true side. He along with Hendrix is showing negative aspects of something. Alexie makes us think of Native Americans as alcoholics that will never be able to succeed in life due to their race when usually we think of them as harmless people. After seeing the YouTube clip of Alexie you also realize he is very negative and has a strong feeling of Native Americans being treated different. I think Alexie is the Hendrix of Native American literature because he took the traditional literature and gave it a twist as did Hendrix.

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