The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)

Like the character of Thomas the best. ( )

I've read Sherman Alexie before, but this is going back in his writing history. It shows; the stories are more raw, which can be a good thing but also leaves plenty undone.
The pain of poverty and oppression of life on a reservation is more evident and his dry humour less so. Still, it's not one to miss. ( )

good, but i much prefer his absolutely true diary of part time indian. the illustrations and narrator's voice spoke to me more clearly. ( )

“…I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive.”

This collection of bittersweet tales, about life on a Spokane Indian Reservation, is a revelation. Alexie based these linked stories on his own experiences, growing up on the Rez and here he focuses on a small group of young people, struggling against a doomed life of poverty and alcoholism, trying to maintain their dignity, their culture and their dissipating dreams. There is humor here too, along with a dash of magical realism and if you peer closely, there are fragments of hope scattered like Fool’s Gold. A triumph.

“Imagination is the politics of dreams. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.”

“And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn’t have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said,’ Both sides of this baby are beautiful’.” ( )

Beautifully written. In this collection of short stories, Sherman Alexie portrays myriad scenes of Indian life, capturing emotion with an appealing simplicity.