Identity is a crucial issue for indigenous people and communities within the confines of the United States. Identity rears its head in many facets of Indian life. Individuals and communities struggle with how to identify themselves as US or Tribal citizens, full or mixed-blood, traditional or contemporary, reservation or urban, and in many other smaller but, just as confusing ways.
Identity is the central theme of Flight. Alexie's main character, Zits, is presented as a half Indian, half white-Irish, fifteen year old orphan whose mother died when he was young and whose father abandoned him.
"Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I'm a blank sky, a human solar eclipse." (p5)
Zits struggles with his identity in part because while he self-identifies as Indian mostly based on how others perceive him due to his looks he is not a "legal" Indian because of his fathers' abandonment which creates a lack of specific tribal affiliation.
"There's this law called the Indian Child Welfare Act that's supposed to protect half-breed orphans like me...But I'm not an official Indian. My Indian daddy gave me his looks, but he was never legally established as my father." (p8-9)*
Alexie creates a character who is a troubled and confused fifteen year old who has been abandoned, orphaned, and shuffled through the show more social welfare system. When the story opens, Zits is a runaway from his most recent foster home and is about to commit a mass shooting in a bank.
Just as Zits is about to fire into the crowded bank he is transported through space and time into different bodies where he explores the themes of identity, betrayal, abandonment, and love. Through these experiences Zits learns that he has a place in this world and that not everything in his life is what it seemed. It's a story of redemption that takes him to the Battle of the Little Big Horn, into the body of a 1970s FBI agent during the struggles of the Red Power Movement, a pilot, and the very father who abandoned him.
"I am looking at Crazy Horse, the magical one. Bullets couldn't hit him. He could never be photographed. He was a holy ghost, the Sioux Jesus...
"I am standing right next to him. And his eyes are gold-colored.
I think the greatest warrior in Sioux history is a half-breed mystery. I think this legendary killer of white men is half white, like me." (p68)
Alexie gives the reader a powerful and raw story of Zits as he comes to understand himself, his circumstances, and his place in this world. My only issue with the book is the section where Zits transports into the body of a pilot who has trained a terrorist to fly planes and betrayed two-women in his life. This section, while touching on the one of the overarching themes of the book, betrayal, differs from the other "transport" sections in that it doesn't deal with Indians at all. Because of that, it just seemed out of place to me.
On a personal note, Flight is the only book that has ever made me cry...a personal testament to the quality and power of Alexie's story.
Indigenous Writes rating: 4.5/5 Not quite as good as frybread, but what really is? show less
Identity is the central theme of Flight. Alexie's main character, Zits, is presented as a half Indian, half white-Irish, fifteen year old orphan whose mother died when he was young and whose father abandoned him.
"Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I'm a blank sky, a human solar eclipse." (p5)
Zits struggles with his identity in part because while he self-identifies as Indian mostly based on how others perceive him due to his looks he is not a "legal" Indian because of his fathers' abandonment which creates a lack of specific tribal affiliation.
"There's this law called the Indian Child Welfare Act that's supposed to protect half-breed orphans like me...But I'm not an official Indian. My Indian daddy gave me his looks, but he was never legally established as my father." (p8-9)*
Alexie creates a character who is a troubled and confused fifteen year old who has been abandoned, orphaned, and shuffled through the show more social welfare system. When the story opens, Zits is a runaway from his most recent foster home and is about to commit a mass shooting in a bank.
Just as Zits is about to fire into the crowded bank he is transported through space and time into different bodies where he explores the themes of identity, betrayal, abandonment, and love. Through these experiences Zits learns that he has a place in this world and that not everything in his life is what it seemed. It's a story of redemption that takes him to the Battle of the Little Big Horn, into the body of a 1970s FBI agent during the struggles of the Red Power Movement, a pilot, and the very father who abandoned him.
"I am looking at Crazy Horse, the magical one. Bullets couldn't hit him. He could never be photographed. He was a holy ghost, the Sioux Jesus...
"I am standing right next to him. And his eyes are gold-colored.
I think the greatest warrior in Sioux history is a half-breed mystery. I think this legendary killer of white men is half white, like me." (p68)
Alexie gives the reader a powerful and raw story of Zits as he comes to understand himself, his circumstances, and his place in this world. My only issue with the book is the section where Zits transports into the body of a pilot who has trained a terrorist to fly planes and betrayed two-women in his life. This section, while touching on the one of the overarching themes of the book, betrayal, differs from the other "transport" sections in that it doesn't deal with Indians at all. Because of that, it just seemed out of place to me.
On a personal note, Flight is the only book that has ever made me cry...a personal testament to the quality and power of Alexie's story.
Indigenous Writes rating: 4.5/5 Not quite as good as frybread, but what really is? show less